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

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

You’ll Learn

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

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

Resources Mentioned in the Show

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Lia Garvin Interview Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And number three?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Anything else?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lia Garvin
“Well, now I know.” Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lia Garvin
And he said no, yeah.

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Totally, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. No problem.

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lia Garvin
Thank you so much.

827: How to Make the Most of Conflict with Liane Davey

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Liane Davey discusses how to ease the friction of conflict to make way for more productive conversations.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why facts won’t solve a conflict—and what will
  2. How to productively respond to harsh criticism
  3. What most people get wrong about feedback

About Liane

Liane Davey is a New York Times Bestselling author. Her most recent book is The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Your Organization Back on Track. She is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and is called on by the media for her leadership, team effectiveness, and productivity expertise. As the co-founder of 3COze Inc., she has companies such as Amazon, RBC, Walmart, UNICEF, 3M, and SONY. Liane has a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology. 

Resources Mentioned

Liane Davey Interview Transcript

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

Liane Davey
Thanks, Pete. I’m pretty excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your wisdom when it comes to conflict, and your work The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. This is a weird segue, but one time I had a consulting project where we had to get one of the world’s largest bakeries, a huge factory for cookies and crackers back on track. And I learned that you have a special love for factories. What’s the story here?

Liane Davey
Since I was a little kid, I used to watch this television show that they did factory tours of things like how do they make crayons, and that one has really stuck with me for 48 years, I think. And so, I just developed this lifelong fascination of how factories work. And not only do I watch the shows on TV, but now every chance I get, I will tour a factory.

And I have also been to a large industrial bakery and watched them make chocolate lava cakes. I have been to the factory where they make Ed shaving cream and Glade candles. And the best one, of course, the Mars chocolate bar factory. So, it’s just I love how the machines work. Industrial engineering just gets me really excited. I didn’t have any of the skills to study it or do it professionally, so I just hop on as a spectator whenever I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. And what’s the name of the show?

Liane Davey
So, “How It’s Made,” oh, when I was a little kid, it was called “Polka Dot Door.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Liane Davey
And I’m in Toronto, it was a local show here in Toronto. It was wonderful. They used to go through the polka dot in the door and open up to a video of a factory, but then “How It’s Made” as all of the mega machine type shows and extreme construction. There’s lots of them now, very popular.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is fun. I heard, I believe it was the I Love Marketing podcast, one of their hosts suggested that it’s a good exercise for marketing and business folks because it just gets…I don’t know, I find, I’ve only done it, like, four times, but I found when I did, there’s a bit of kind of like awe and inspiration that gets my mind noodling on, “Well, huh, what’s my podcast? How does that get baked? Where are the stuff? What are my bottlenecks? What can we improve?”

Liane Davey
When I learned that I wasn’t going to be good at engineering or building it, I started to think about the modern economy and what’s the equivalent of a factory or a machine in the modern economy. And, of course, the answer is it’s a team. In knowledge work, the team is the machine, and so I was like, “Oh, I can do psychology, that comes naturally.” So, that’s where I kind of still think of it as machinery, in a sense, but it’s just human machinery.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, Liane, you did the work of the trick of the segue for me because let’s talk about these machines, and sometimes things are not quite functioning properly in the realm of conflict. Could you share with us, what do most people get wrong about conflict? Or, what have you found supremely surprising and fascinating and counterintuitive in terms of your discoveries within this topic?

Liane Davey
Yup, teams don’t have enough conflict.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, not enough. I’ve heard that before. I think it was Pat Lencioni who mentioned it on the show. Please unpack that for us.

Liane Davey
Yes. So, conflict, which let me just define it because I think when there’s wars raging in the world and COVID mask-wearing fights on Facebook and everything else, I think conflict has got a bad rap, but conflict is just the struggle between incompatible or opposing needs, wishes, and demands. And by 10:00 o’clock every morning, if you work in an organization, you’ve faced many struggles between incompatible and opposing needs, wishes, and demands.

So, if we’re going to take a limited number of resources, a limited number of hours in the day, people who are overtaxed and overworked, and decide what’s the most valuable thing we can do be doing with their time, that’s going to require conflict because there are many things competing for their time and attention.

If we’re going to look at a plan and not just rubber stamp it but look at what are some of the assumptions, what are some of the risks, that takes conflict. If we’re going to give somebody feedback, that the way their work landed with us, or the way their behavior landed with us, is causing problems, that’s going to require conflict.

So, all day, every day, conflict is important, critical, to healthy organizations. And so, that’s what people are most surprised about. So, what we get wrong is that, as humans, we tend to run from conflict, particularly with our own groups. We believe that having conflict with those people is going to get us voted off the island, in some sense, and so we have far too little productive conflict.

And then we can also talk about, on the other hand, we tend to have far too much unhealthy, unproductive, harmful conflicts. So, we’re getting it wrong, we have too little of what I call tension, which is the kind of conflict that stretches us, and helps us grow and learn and optimize solutions, and we have too much friction, which is the kind of conflict that is about not listening, not budging, not learning that wears us down.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very beautiful, Liane, the tension versus friction. Maybe it’s I don’t get enough kinesthetic metaphors in my life.

Liane Davey
So, the metaphor, if you want to take it further, so what I say is I use the word conflict, even though a lot of people ask me not to, I use it because I don’t ever want folks to have the expectation that it’s not going to be uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable. Even the healthiest most productive conflict is uncomfortable. But I always say tension is uncomfortable like yoga.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I was thinking weightlifting.

Liane Davey
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one as well, right? But in both cases, weightlifting and yoga, the stretch of that tension is constructive. It builds muscle. It enhances flexibility. It makes us better. But, on the other hand, friction, if you want to play with the metaphor there, is like getting a blister. And there is nothing good to be said for a blister. It is that chaffing, agonizing, red raw kind of feeling. So, we want more tension, more that yoga-weightlifting stretch, and we want less friction.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, I’d love it if you could zoom in and make this extra clear and real for us in terms of sharing a case study or success story of a team or a professional who had a whole lot of friction and how they converted that into useful tension.

Liane Davey
Yeah, absolutely. I’m working with a team right now where issues have built up, and what I refer to as conflict debt. So, just as we can get into debt by sort of charging things we can’t afford to our credit card, we get into conflict debt by just deciding we don’t have the energy or the time to address issues, and we just put them aside. And, unfortunately, the interest compounds, and we get ourselves into bigger and bigger trouble as that conflict debt piles up in a team.

So, I’m working with a team that’s in a considerable amount of conflict debt, and there’s a lot of friction. And the friction is being experienced as, “They’re arrogant. They don’t empathize,” and it’s all coming out as things that are very subjective. The behavior has now got to a point where “I’m not even responding to their emails. I don’t even want to talk to them.” And so, we’ve reached this stalemate where that’s where I got involved.

And so, the work is to say, “There is tension in here. There is something uncomfortable that we need to talk about, get into the open, so that we can do a better job of understanding the realities and the constraints for everybody involved.” But the problem right now is there’s no chance to resolve the tensions or kind of come up with a solution that optimizes because everyone is experiencing it as friction.

And so, one of the things that you can do is really take the way that you’re feeling. And so, if you’re feeling that is someone is arrogant, that’s a judgment. And arrogance is probably more about how you’re experiencing the other person’s behavior than about what the other person is intending. So, the first thing to do is to just notice that you’re making a judgment, and it’s not real or objective. It’s true that it’s your judgment, and so we don’t want to invalidate it, but we want to start by kind of saying, “What is making me feel that they’re arrogant? What is it that I’m seeing or hearing, or not seeing or hearing, that is leading me to that conclusion?”

And as a very first step, just interrogate your own judgments because those judgments are going to be a big, big source of friction. Once you can kind of interrogate the judgment, you want to, again, not invalidate it, not tell yourself that “I’m not allowed to feel that way” but, instead, to try and translate it into, “Okay, if I wanted to communicate that to the other person in hopes of changing the interaction, how can I say it in a way that is either useful feedback so I could determine what’s their behavior and how am I reacting to it?”

So, I could say something like, “When, in the last three decisions we’ve made, we’ve gone with your recommendation over my recommendation, I feel like my ideas aren’t valuable. I feel like they’re not getting a fair shake.” So, we can sort of take what was judgment about arrogance and translate it into behaviors, “You selecting your ideas over mine, or somebody else’s over mine.”

Or, we can make a request. We can say, “What I would really love is if when you go with a decision other than the one I recommended, could you help all of us understand how you took my input, how you used it, how you mitigated the risks that I mentioned, even if we’re going with the other decision?” So, that’s really a big thing.

When you have friction, when you get into a hole, when you get into that conflict debt, you’ll tend to have a lot of judgment about other people. So, listen to it, interrogate it, and then translate it into something that is constructive, something that is positive tension and move forward from there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I put myself into that situation, I’m imagining the person on the other side saying something you really don’t want to hear, which may be the unpleasant truth, which is, “Well, the input that you have provided historically has been inaccurate and risky,” and I guess, here, we’re doing some more labeling or judging.

Liane Davey
That is what’s most likely to happen, right, so keep going, keep roleplaying that and I’ll answer it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. “Well, Liane, I appreciate you being able to articulate this to me. I guess the challenge we’re facing is that in those three examples that we’ve explored there, your input was inaccurate, and risky, and showed a basic lack of understanding about the core issues that we’re dealing with here.”

Liane Davey
“Wow, that’s pretty unpleasant to hear, a lack of understanding, and risky. That’s certainly not my intention. What do you see as the things I wasn’t paying enough attention to? Or, what else do you think I need to understand to be in a position to offer more valuable advice or suggestions in the future?” So, what you want to do is not allow people to throw judgment back at you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Liane Davey
So, I do think it’s the way you roleplayed it is very true. People will often say “Well, you were risky, or ill-informed, or…” that’s what they’ll give you, so be prepared for that. But the key thing in that situation, so what I was trying to show is it’s okay to say that that just felt like a sucker punch. It’s okay to be human.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I’m sorry, Liane. Even though it was a roleplay, it felt hard saying it.

Liane Davey
Right. And so, it’s okay to say, “That’s really hard to hear. Like, I’ve never had that feedback before.” So, it’s okay to react for a moment, to just buy yourself a little time, or even, with some folks, I just recommend don’t even worry about getting a lot of words out. Just say something like, “Ow,” and then give yourself a moment to then say, “Okay.”

And you can either, in the moment, say, “What does risky look like? Could you share with me what I was missing, what made my recommendations risky? Or, what else do you think I need to understand, or learn, or appreciate to…” and so you can go right after then. Or, you can say, “Ow,” and say, “I’m going to need to reflect on that for a bit. Can I follow up with you on this later? Or, could I ask that we have another time where you help me understand what risky looks like and what it means, and where we go from here?”

So, first of all, don’t let someone judge you. I think that’s a key piece of advice. Make them do the hard work of giving you something objective because you did the hard work to be objective with them. And then don’t be afraid to let people know that you are human and it can be hurtful when somebody judges you.

And then, finally, lead on whether you would like to have that conversation now, or whether you need a little bit of time, but do come back to a place where you can find out both what happened that didn’t work the first time, and what could look differently so that it goes better the next time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really excellent. And as I’m imagining the conversation playing out, I guess you’ll realize that, again, doing more labeling and judging, it’s like, there’s a chance, I imagine it’s slim, Liane, maybe you’ve got the data, that you are dealing with just a full-on sociopath or a total jerkface who just has no…

Liane Davey
Five percent.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, 5% – who has little regard for your feelings or whatever. But I guess, more likely, you’ll hear something which is useful or on its way to being useful in terms of, “Well, Liane, you failed to consider just how sensitive issues X, Y, and Z are for stakeholders A, B, and C. And those are really hot-button issues, and it’s pretty cavalier to just mention them in this flippant context which could really set them off and make our team look bad.” And it’s like, “Oh, I had no idea that those were hot-button issues for those stakeholders, and now I know.”

Or, it’s like, “Your proposals seem to overlook the fundamental fact that a key part of our valuation is the Wall Street perception of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, “Oh, you’re right. I thought all that mattered was cashflow or profitability.” Like, “Okay, hmm.” So, that could, indeed, unlock some insight, or often that’s a problem with feedback is that it remains into this fuzzy land in terms of…

Liane Davey
Right, it’s not feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
“You just need to be more of a team player, Liane.”

Liane Davey
Right. So, let’s stop on feedback for a moment because I feel really passionately about this one. What the vast majority of people called giving feedback is actually making evaluations. It’s not feedback at all. So, feedback, true feedback is to give the other person new insight about how their behavior is impacting you. So, I could say, “Hey, Pete, when you sent me information to prepare for this conversation,” so that’s totally objective. It’s immediate.

Pete Mockaitis
That happened. For the record.

Liane Davey
I say, “I felt like you really take this podcast seriously, like I was excited to be on a podcast that is so professional.” That’s feedback. So, the feedback is not novel information about you or your behavior. It’s novel information about me or the impact of your behavior. And what we do most of the time is we just walk around flinging in judgment at people. And in this case, it’s positive and so people think it’s okay, “Hey, Pete, you’re so professional.”

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, you’re right, I don’t mind that at all.

Liane Davey
Right. But I encourage people, I call that praise. It is unconstructive positive messages. And I encourage people to practice on the positive because if you practice on the positive and get it wrong, you’re not going to get in much trouble. When you move to the more constructive or negative feedback, it becomes more dangerous and higher stakes, so you want to practice on the positive.

But what you’re doing is when you’re giving somebody feedback, if you tell them what they think, if you tell them how they feel, if you tell them who they are, that denies somebody’s personal sovereignty and it’s likely to lead to a really unhealthy conflict. It’s not going anywhere good. If you describe their behavior as objectively as possible in a way that you go, “You’re right, I did send a four-page document about how to be prepared for this podcast.”

You’re going to be nodding and saying yes, and then so I might’ve given you it as constructive feedback, “I was pretty overwhelmed, I was nervous that I’m not ready to be on this podcast, or I’m not good enough.” I could’ve given it as constructive. But, again, the key thing is that your behavior is not something you’re going to debate or disagree with in my feedback. What you’re going to be surprised by and learn from is, “Oh, I didn’t intend to intimidate a guest. I was trying to help you feel prepared.”

So, getting feedback right and actually delivering feedback, giving people the gift of candor, what I would say is candor, for me, is me being willing to be uncomfortable for your benefit. So, it’s uncomfortable if I had…it’s, of course, not true because I felt very positively about the preparation for the podcast, but if I had felt intimidated, being vulnerable and saying, “That was intimidating,” opens me up to saying, “I’m not as professional as your other guests.”

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re not committed. You’re not willing to do the work, Liane.”

Liane Davey
Right. So, candor is me being willing to be personally uncomfortable for your benefit. But I’d like you to know, just in case there are other guests in the future, or in case your intent was not to intimidate the guests, or those sorts of things. So, if we could just get that one thing fixed up, if we could start giving proper feedback, and stop evaluating and judging, like feedback most of the time is just evaluation and judgment in sheep’s clothing. So, if we could stop that, we would deal with a lot of the friction that’s going on at the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Huh, Liane, this is a lot of good insightful stuff. And I’m thinking about that notion of, in my consulting brain sees a two-by-two matrix, in terms of constructive-unconstructive, like, “You’re very professional.” It’s like that feels good but it doesn’t help me. And now I’m thinking about Russ Laraway who talks about continue coaching is like praise or comparable.

And so, I guess, the constructive point might be just something like, “Hey, I really recommend you make sure you keep doing that. Like, if you switch calendar software providers, make sure people still get that thing because it’s so good.”

Liane Davey
Right. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Liane Davey
Yeah, exactly. Or, I could ask a question, like, “What’s one new insight you’ve had in the last month and not incorporated into the document yet?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure, yeah.

Liane Davey
I could ask you something like that to help you more deeply process something you’re doing well. So, yeah, the two-by-two is, “Is it constructive or unconstructive?” And, “Is it behavior I want you to do more of or do less of?” So, that would be what people tend to call positive or negative feedback but I don’t like that term but it’s, “Do I want more of the behavior?” so coaching forward. Or, “Do I want less of the behavior?” and so that’s the two-by-two.

So, praise is everywhere. So, praise like, “Good job.” And if you want a fun research tidbit, Dr. Nick Morgan, so, yeah, Nick is a great friend, and Nick cited some research, so I’m going to get the stats wrong. But it’s something like 60% of folks who receive a text or an email or a comment that’s just “Good job,” about 60% of them interpret that as sarcasm. So, you think you’re praising someone, you think you’re being nice, and they’re like, “Oh, oh, well, fine,” they experience it as sarcasm.

So, that’s all the more reason to not praise people, which is that unconstructive, “I want more of this,” and instead to go to the effort that we’re talking about of giving positive feedback, “So, when you sent out that document, I felt so prepared, I felt confident signing on today, I’m really interested. Are there any new things you’ve realized that you haven’t added to the document yet?”

Handing that baton back to you to process it a little bit more deeply, one of the things that’s good about that is lots of people don’t like getting that positive feedback. They’re a little squeamish or awkward or uncomfortable about it, so they just kind of let it kind of float away. So, by asking you a question, like, “What’s one insight you haven’t incorporated yet?” it forces you to process that positive feedback to work with it, to internalize it a little more so it makes it stickier.

On the behavior we’re trying to get less of, asking the question is really…so, in the case of, where we’re talking about being less arrogant, saying something like, “How do you want to be perceived by your colleagues in operations?” would be a way of forcing the person to process, “Oh, okay, if you’re telling me that the way this lands as I’m smarter than everybody else, processing the question of ‘How do I want to be perceived’ forces me to work with that information,’” again, making it stickier.

So, yeah, so the great pieces of good feedback are sort of orient the person to the situation, describe their behavior, then give them an insight about you, and then pivot the conversation to processing it more deeply, and, “What am I going to do with that information?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so much good stuff, Liane. Well, I’ve got all these questions I want to ask, like, how do we work to the emotion of conflict? And it sounds like we hit it right there. But were there more?

Liane Davey
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Okay.

Liane Davey
Oh, yes. Okay, emotion is a big, big, big, big, big important topic for me. We’re not good at it and a lot of our conflict debt is because we don’t want to broach the topic because we fear triggering an emotional reaction, and sometimes that’s a very positive thing, it’s like, “I don’t want to hurt these people. I care about them,” and sometimes it’s a bit of a selfish thing, “I don’t want them to not like me anymore,” or, “I don’t want them to yell at me because that would scare me.”

So, one of the things we need to understand is that, I say this all the time, facts don’t solve fights. Period. And if wearing masks debated on Facebook is not the perfect evidence that facts don’t solve fights, I don’t know what is. But you coming up with some examples of where two people were wearing masks and they both got COVID, and, therefore, isn’t it clear that masks don’t work. And me posting back some article from science magazine showing respiratory droplets, you know, nobody is changing their mind based on that fight with facts.

Instead, we need to understand that fights are about values and beliefs and things that matter. And so, emotions are simply clues that we…I always talk about this. If the dragon starts to breathe fire, you know it’s protecting treasure. So, facts are just the wall of the castle, they’re very unimportant. But if the dragon is breathing fire, yelling, crying, getting angry, pounding the table, then that’s your clue, emotions are very, very helpful clue, that there is something going wrong that there is a value that they hold dear that feels at risk, feels threatened, and that’s why you’re getting the fight that you’re getting.

So, emotions are one of the most important datasets we get in organizations, and emotions don’t always come out as yelling or tears. One way emotions often come out is people start to dial up their language. So, all of a sudden, their sentences are including, “You always…” and, “We never…” and, “Every single…” we start to use absolutes, we start to see sarcasm pop in to people’s comments.

So, all of these things, whether it be tears or sarcasm or any of these other examples, are just signs that there’s emotion present, which means there are values at play in this conversation. And so, trying to put more facts or try to take facts out of the brick wall is not going to help. What you need to do is try and get the brave knight to lower the drawbridge so you can come in and you can find out what’s actually going on.

So, I think emotions are…and a different metaphor, if you don’t like the fire-breathing dragon metaphor, a different metaphor is emotions in the workplace are a lot like pain, not something you want very often but very useful if there’s an injury because they tell you to slow down and stop and pay attention, and it gives you the opportunity to figure out what’s actually going wrong.

So, I find we treat emotions as something to push through as quickly as we can, to suppress, to invalidate, to just say, “Well, this is business, not personal,” or, “Suck it up, buttercup,” when emotions are one of the most valuable datasets that we have in an organization, and it’s so important that we use those data to figure out what is this fight actually about.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when we talk about values, well, I’ve seen long list of values, and I guess I’m also thinking about fundamental human needs in my head is Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication talking about, “I felt like my need for respect wasn’t being met and so I felt angry.” And so, when you say values, are you thinking about a short list on a menu, or are you thinking about it could be hundreds of things?

Liane Davey
Yeah, I think it can be hundreds of things. So, I was working with an organization, a high-tech computer organization, and we were debating about whether they needed to do a layoff or not. And the CEO was advocating pretty strongly against it, while the general manager of the unit that was in the red was advocating pretty strongly for it, and they really…there was a lot of friction. It wasn’t a constructive conversation.

And so, one of the ways to get values on the table in business is to ask the question, “Okay, what are the criteria for making a good decision here? Because it’s kind of cold, and people think that’s an okay thing to say in the world, where, “What do you value?” just doesn’t feel like…” So, when I said that, the general manager said, “Well, I really value performance. I am here on behalf of the shareholders to make sure this business is profitable, and I wear that responsibility very heavily.”

And then the CEO, interestingly, said, “Well, you know what, for me, I feel like tech companies have mojo, and if you lose that mojo, that’s worth more than a couple of quarters in the red. You don’t get it back, and so I’m thinking about that.” And so, those…

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Liane, if I could time out for just a moment.

Liane Davey
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Mojo could be defined a few ways. Could you unpack that a smidge?

Liane Davey
Yeah, absolutely. So, Silicon Valley companies, and actually this is a great time to be saying that, their valuations, both in the stock market but also in the eyes of potential employees or users, they are often quite disconnected from reality. They are not about how much revenue or profit the company makes. There’s just something more about brand, more about hype, more about excitement. Some companies have momentum behind them and some don’t.

And this was a company that had a lot of momentum. It was seen as a cool company, a company people wanted to invest in, a company people wanted to work for, and so the CEO’s concern was that, “If we do our first layoffs, then the big risk is that we lose that and we never get it back. We never go back to being a company that’s never let a single person go.”

So, this was a few years ago now, and it was just so helpful to have that on the table and to be able to talk that through because he’d never articulated it. The general manager couldn’t figure out why the heck the CEO was willing to have his business be unprofitable. And so, once we could talk about that as, “These are all legitimate things. Now, how do we balance them? How do we make tradeoffs among them? How do we decide which way to go?”

And, actually, what was really cool about it is then we got away from the friction and into a really powerful conversation with really good tensions that led to a completely different option, which was, “We have other business units that are quite profitable at the moment. Could we move some of the folks, the really key talent, over to the other unit for a while, make some real progress there, never have to let go people who would be very hard to replace but also give the other business a little bit of a chance to recover, cut its costs.”

So, once we got to everybody feeling heard, everybody feeling that the things that mattered to them were part of the equation for the solution, then they just got so much more creative, then they got out of this adversarial scenario and into, “Let’s really think about this together. If we’re trying to solve for profitability of the business, if we’re trying to solve for keeping the mojo of the company,” others then sort of started to add.

The chief technology officer was the one who raised the issues that, “These are people with specialty skills that we’ve been training for 10 years. If we lose those, we don’t get them back.” So, his addition in things he values to the criteria conversation is what unlocked this possibility of, “Could we secund them into a different part of the organization?”

So, when we feel heard, when we feel understood, when we feel like our treasure matters to other people as well, then we settle into, “All right, now we’re smart people trying to figure out how do we balance these things.” So, it’s a very, very useful and constructive productive conflict technique.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things, I’d love to hear if there’s any super quick and powerful tips and tricks that make a world of difference?

Liane Davey
Yeah, there really is. And the one sort of magic trick of all of this is that most of the time we walk around the world working so hard to have people understand our experience. As Stephen Covey used to call it, we sort of strive to be understood instead of seeking to understand. So, there’s a technique I call validation, which is just when someone says something you disagree with or you think is a dumb idea, pause for a moment, and, instead of shooting down their idea or telling them why it will never work, validate them by saying, “Okay, so you think we should host a customer event in Q1.”

So, all you’ve done is reflect. And then be curious. Ask, try and understand, that’s coming from somewhere, something they value, and just ask a big open-ended question, “What do you see is the big advantages of that? Tell me your thought process. What got you there?” something of a big question. And then listen and ask and reflect until you feel confident that you can kind of get their truth out of your mouth.

Then you might say, “Okay, so for you, you’re worried that our marketing launch didn’t bring the benefits of this new approach to life for our customers. And until they feel it in a different way, until they can maybe put their hands on the new product, you don’t think sales are going to go up, so that’s why doing an event in person feels like the right solution for you.”

What you’ll find is when you speak their truth, their truth, even more importantly, when their truth comes out of your mouth before your truth does, it will be an entirely different conversation. It will shift to truly a conversation, a dialogue, and it won’t be a fight. Then what’s cool about humans is we work on reciprocity.

So, when you’ve taken the time to understand their truth and listen and validate them, they will be highly likely, unless we’re with the 5% of sociopaths, but if we’re with 95% of the population, and then you say, “The way I was thinking about it was that before we talk to our customers, we need to do another round of training with our sales staff. I’m not sure they’re ready to tell the message in a compelling way. So, I was thinking that that was the issue. How do we get the right balance between our sales team and going directly to our clients?” or you can ask whatever other question.

But when you’ve spoken their truth first, when you’ve added your truth, not as something more right or more worthy, but you’ve added it as a second truth, and then you’ve kind of pivoted to, “Hmm, okay, what are our options here? How do we deal with this?” you will find, you avoid, you neutralize 80% of conflicts in your team.

And the one thing, I know you have a young one at home, I have a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old daughter, and this method, it got me through the entire teenage years. If you validate a teenager, if you make them feel heard, if you’re curious about why that’s true for them, and you get their truth out of your mouth first, they actually will hear you out. They will let you coach them. They will stay with you.

So, this technique, my guess is every single person listening will be able to use this technique today at some point because we tend to do the opposite. We invalidate people, we push for our truth, or why our idea is smarter or all of these things first. And if we flip the order, and said, “Okay, let me make sure I know your truth. And as soon as we both know that I know your truth, then I’ll add mine.” It changes everything.


Pete Mockaitis
Thank you, Liane. Well, I’m curious, any particularly memorable exchanges with a teenager that you could share with us as an illustration, like, “Oh, that’s how it’s done”?

Liane Davey
Well, the first, I’m going to first tell you how not to do it because it’s memorable because I did it wrong. When the elder one was in Grade 10, she was taking music because she loved music, and she came home one day and proclaimed that she hated her music teacher, and I blew it. I kind of looked at her, I don’t like the word hate, and I definitely don’t like it aimed at a teacher.

So, my response was, “You don’t hate your music teacher,” which, if you remember, we were talking about this sort of cardinal rules of respecting someone’s sovereignty, and telling somebody else how they feel is not cool, not allowed. And so, I blew that. So, it took me about three weeks to earn back the right to talk to her about this.

Pete Mockaitis
And what did she say, “I do, too. You don’t understand, mom. Shut up”?

Liane Davey
Well, she started and then she just stormed off, the heavy thumps up the stairs and the dramatic slamming of the door, and she was right to do that. I had really overstepped. I had blown it. And so, when I tried again, do-over, you have to do do-overs with teenagers, when I did the do-over, I just said, “Hey, I want to go back to this, and it must really suck to hate your music teacher because you got an hour and 20 minutes of that every single day, and I know you love music.”

And even just me saying that, me just validating that that must be rough, changed her entire body language. And so, then I said, “What’s going on?” And I, being a horrible person, had assumed that this was the teacher who’d finally figured out that she never practices, but that wasn’t it at all. I’m so bad. It turned out that this teacher, there was a kid in the class, probably a neurodiverse kid would be my guess, sitting still, not fidgeting was a challenge for him.

And this old-school teacher just would have no part of it, and she was leaving him, bullying him, my daughter said, and leaving him in the hall for the majority of almost all classes, and that’s why she was so upset. It wasn’t on her own behalf. It was because somebody else was being wronged, and my kid is a social justice crusader.

And so, I said, I could then speak her truth, “So, you’re really worried that Ms. T is quite unfair to Gibby, you’re worried how this is affecting him. Okay.” And, first of all, I was proud of her for feeling all those things. And then I could say, “Okay, now what I’m thinking about is how do we make sure you don’t lose your love of music? How do we make sure this doesn’t affect your grade? Can we find you other outlets for your love of music outside of the classroom?”

And she was totally willing to entertain those things once I had been clear that this was about the injustice and the teacher’s behavior in the classroom. So, invalidating her cost me three weeks, and that was extremely costly, and it was modeling terrible behavior, and I had really blown it. But when I came back to it, and I said, “Look, I’m sorry about that. I blew that and I really want to understand and I want to hear you.”

And when I was open and listened and reflected her experience of the situation, then she was so keen to talk with me about, “What can I do? And what are my other options?” And those were really, really powerful. And she’s a junior in college now, and we have great conversations about hard things now because I finally figured out that this validation technique, which just takes a little practice, completely changes the tone of all of our conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Liane. Well, now, if we could hear a bit about your favorite things. Could you start us with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Liane Davey
“When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.”

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

Liane Davey
So, we’ve been talking so much about cameras on and cameras off, and Zoom and all those sorts of things. New piece of research that when we’re having these hard conversations, when we’re trying to understand values and emotions and those sorts of things, it turns out the telephone is much, much better at promoting what they call empathic accuracy than these web calls.

Pete Mockaitis
Really?

Liane Davey
So, if you really need to connect with someone, if you’re in conflict, if you need to understand where they’re at, and if you want to be more accurate in empathizing, go for a walk, put in your earbuds and talk on the phone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, that’s so fascinating and counterintuitive. It seems like aren’t we missing out on all these facial expression indicators with the phone? Do we have hypotheses as to what the mechanism is by which that is so?

Liane Davey
Yeah, so it’s new research. So, first of all, we get a lot more information from voice than we think. So, like, here’s my mini experiment for you. If you close your eyes, I’m going to talk, and, at some point in talking, I’m going to start smiling. Could you hear it? Did you hear the difference between? So, right now I’m not smiling, and now I’m smiling.

So, what happens is when you pull up the muscles in your face to smile, it lifts up your soft palate, changes the shape of the resonant chamber of your mouth, and it’s absolutely something that we can pick up on. So, there’s more data in the voice than we think or know. And new studies are saying that we take up a lot of bandwidth, cognitive bandwidth, in trying to process people’s facial expressions and body language, and we’re not always very accurate about it.

So, what you’re doing in going to the phone is you’re getting rid of all of the energy it takes to process and misprocess that facial information, and you’re really keying in on what is actually quite high-fidelity data coming from pitch and tone and words and all those sorts of things. So, yeah, really fun, exciting, new research coming out.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Liane Davey
Well, I guess if you want relative to this topic, I would say Chris Voss’ Never Split the Difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Liane Davey
A former FBI hostage negotiator, and it’s just full of many fascinating stories and insights. And I know that, thankfully for most of us, the stakes are not as high as hostage negotiations in most of our collaborations. But there are many things to be learned from Chris’ stories and examples.

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

Liane Davey
So, I am a big fan, so my PhD is organizational psychology, so I am coming to every conversation with the understanding that while we want to have one-size-fits-all, and we want to have the perfect advice, that individual differences play far bigger of a role than we yet appreciate on teams. So, I use a tool called The Birkman. It’s a very deep and insightful psychological assessment tool, and I don’t leave home without it. I don’t work with any teams without having that understanding, deep understanding, of the individual. So, Birkman would be my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Liane Davey
This is not a productive habit, but I am so in love with, you know the Wordle craze?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Liane Davey
I did Wordle. I’m not a big fan of Wordle because some days I get stuck and it makes me feel dumb. But it’s expanded and it’s had babies. It’s gone to Quardle, so it’s four words at a time, and now Octordle, which is eight words at a time. And so, every morning, I do the Octordle, which sounds ridiculous, and I then text my results to my 89-year-old mom who lives far away, and she texts me back hers. And that habit, which is just a little tiny moment of connection to start my day, feels really great.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Liane Davey
That facts don’t solve fights one does come back to me a lot. Maybe another one, since I’ve already said that one, is communication comes from the Latin root commune, which is to make common. And so, in this email-Slack kind of world, I always say, “You can’t make common as one person. So, you can’t communicate to someone. You can’t communicate at someone. You can only communicate with someone.”

So, communication cannot be accomplished on your own. You cannot send an email and check off, “I have communicated.” You only communicate when it’s actually been a two-way process, and you have made something common. And in conflict, I think we communicate with each other far too seldom, so that might be another thought that is helpful to folks. Who have you communicated at that you need to communicate with?

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

Liane Davey
So, if you want come and interact with me, I always talk about LinkedIn as my couch. Come and sit on my LinkedIn couch and let’s talk about interesting things about making teams happier, healthier, and more productive. And if you want to dive into the treasure trove that is about 500 articles and free resources, that’d be my website LianeDavey.com.

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

Liane Davey
Yeah. So, this is a big one because I think the vast majority of us are conflict-averse, we don’t like it, we get into conflict debt, we avoid it. So, my call to action is that some things are worth fighting for.

Pete Mockaitis
Liane, this has been such a treat. I wish you much fun and productive conflict in your interactions.

Liane Davey
Thanks so much, Pete. I have had a blast.


823: How to Collaborate Smarter with Dr. Heidi Gardner

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Dr. Heidi Gardner reveals when, why, and how to collaborate optimally.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to stop overcommitment and overcollaboration
  2. How diversity makes for better collaborations
  3. How to overcome the barriers to collaboration 

About Heidi

Heidi K. Gardner, PhD. is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, and was previously a professor at Harvard Business School and a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Named by Thinkers50 as a Next Generation Business Guru, Dr. Gardner is a sought-after advisor, keynote speaker, and facilitator for organizations across a wide range of industries globally. She is the co-founder of the research and advisory firm Gardner & Co. and the author, alongside Ivan A. Matviak, of Smarter Collaboration.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Heidi Gardner Interview Transcript

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

Heidi Gardner
Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom when it comes to collaboration and doing it smarter and better. First, I want to hear, you’ve actually got to experience a little bit of an inside view of an interesting slice of history. You worked with the German Ministry of Education during the post-reunification time, helping reform their English curriculum. Any interesting stories from that era?

Heidi Gardner
So, this goes way back. It was the year 1995, I believe, and I was a Fulbright fellow living in a town, a city, called Dassel, Germany, which was basically smack in the center of what had been the DDR. And at that point, it was a pretty rough time to be living in the former East Germany in the sense that a lot of young people had cleared out, they had moved to West Germany in order to seek better economic opportunities, better job prospects.

And I was there working inside the education system, I was teaching in the Gymnasium, which are the high schools, and teaching in some of the technical programs and things, and I was also doing a lot of teacher-training and education curriculum reform. And it was a fascinating time to be there and experience this sort of change.

What I realized at the time is that, because of people’s relative isolation behind the Iron Curtain, there were so many things that they hadn’t been exposed to intellectually, culturally, that I had taken for granted, and I saw that as a real eye-opener for me. I had known that, of course, growing up in the States in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but to experience it firsthand and to be with people, explaining things that were very basic and very run-of-the-mill to me, which were fascinating to individuals who hadn’t experienced them previously.

For example, the idea that everyone in my family had their own car. It was an incredible eye-opener to them that that was actually pretty normal where I came from. And the idea that we would have bananas day in, day out, that was kind of the cheap food, things like that that I learned to appreciate more by living in that kind of environment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you. Okay. Well, now, let’s hear a little bit about collaboration, and you’ve seen a whole lot of different environments, some in which people are grateful to be in, and some very much not so grateful. Could you share any particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about collaboration from your work and research here for so many years?

Heidi Gardner
Absolutely. So, when we’re talking about collaboration, we’re not just talking about run-of-the-mill throw-a-team at every problem. We’re talking about the term we call smarter collaboration, which is starting with the end in mind and being hyper-intentional about how you bring people together, which particular kinds of experts do you need, when do you need to bring different people in so they contribute different perspectives that, collectively, allow the group to be something more innovative, more profitable, more productive, somehow better and tackle more complex issues than any of those people could’ve done on their own.

And what was surprising to me as we’ve been studying this over the last 10 plus years is how many mistakes people can make with something, which is a relatively straightforward process like that. One of the big mistakes that people have fallen into recently, sort of a trap, if you will, is the belief that if collaboration is good, more is better.

And so, what we see is a phenomenon of what we call overcommitment or over-collaboration, that people are joining many, many, many teams, or getting drafted onto different projects, or being asked to join the committee or the taskforce or the initiative, and people are stretched so thin that converse to the intentions, the intentions were, “Hey, let’s make the most of this great employee we have,” but the opposite happens.

That person gets stretched so thin that they end up doing fairly similar work project after project after project, and they don’t have the time to engage deeply, and they don’t have time to stretch their skills, and they don’t have time to really learn and think about how they could improve what they’re doing, and they also typically don’t get great coaching or mentorship along the way. And it’s been really surprising to me how common that problem is overcommitment inside lots of kinds of organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
The problem of overcommitment, I have seen, felt, heard that from my own firsthand experience as well as that of many others I’ve worked with. I’m curious, what is the fundamental root cause of overcommitment? It just seems like it’s almost ubiquitous in terms of professionals have too many emails, too many meetings, too many projects, and it’s just a cluster in a lot of organizations and a lot of professionals’ work lives. So, what’s behind this and how do we fix it?

Heidi Gardner
I see two kinds of root causes and both of them, I should say, stem from really good intentions, and that’s why it’s oftentimes hard to find a solution for it is because people are trying to do the right thing. So, in one scenario, you have the idea that “We’ve got these people who are really great at some specialized area and we want to make the most of them, both because they want to be challenged and because we, as a company, are paying a lot of money for these specialists, and so let’s really make sure we deploy them where they can make the most impact.” That’s the intention.

But, as the person’s reputation grows inside the organization, more and more people want a piece of that thing, so they’re like, “Oh, let me go grab Jane for this project. Let me go grab Joe, this expert,” and Jane and Joe keep getting tapped again and again and again for all of these different pieces of work, and that’s when we run into that problem of overcommitment. But, again, it stems from good intentions, “Let’s make the most of their skills.”

The other scenario is maybe even more pernicious. There is a very strong, credible research-backed reason to believe that when teams comprise people with very different kinds of backgrounds, and life experiences, and cultures, and a whole variety of different categories of diversity that that team has the potential to outperform. Very true.

Pete Mockaitis
Potential.

Heidi Gardner
But oftentimes what that means is that people who fall into particular categories, if you will, inside organizations that are underrepresented, the demand for them exceeds the supply for those individuals. Think about it in gender terms. This is happening in a lot of corporate boardrooms right now where they say…

Pete Mockaitis
“Hey, you’re a woman. Get on our board, too.”

Heidi Gardner
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Just like that. Okay.

Heidi Gardner
Absolutely. And they’re all looking for the same women, “Oh, well, we need a woman who was the CFO of a Fortune 500 company who has this kind of background and this number of years of experience.” And guess what? There aren’t just that many of that particular kind of person. And those individuals end up getting tapped again and again, in this case, for corporate boards or inside organizations. I worked with, for example, a lot of professional service firms. There just aren’t, empirically speaking, that many black women partners in professional service firms, and everyone wants their perspective and their wisdom and their experiences on their teams.

And so, those individuals are just pulled in so many directions, both, in the case of professional services, on client-facing teams but also on internal initiatives, like hiring, and recruiting, and employee engagement, and diversity and inclusion committees, and all of these places. And this is the second way that people get over-tapped and overcommitted.

And in both of those scenarios, managers and leaders with good intentions need to take a step back and look at the system. It’s not a set of individual choices. It’s a whole bunch of choices that systemically, collectively add up to trouble. And what we recommend, you asked for some solutions, first of all, and one probably I’ll keep coming back to in the course of our conversation, is get the data.

There is data that exists somewhere at some level in every company or organization that shows what people are working on and how many different ways and directions that they’re pulled. And there needs to be a person or a department, depending on how big the organization is, that keeps an eye out for this problem of overcommitment.

We studied it in a biotech company, for example. They asked us to come in because they had dropped a major ball, and figured out way too late that some of their best scientists were pulled in a thousand different directions, and when something really went wrong in one project, there was nobody to cover it.

So, this biotech asked us to come in. We took a look at the data and we started by asking them, “How many projects does every scientist like this one work on?” And they said, “Oh, probably two or three,” and they were right to some degree. Most people worked on two or three projects at once. But when we ran the numbers, we found that there were some people working on seven, eight, even eleven projects at once.

And those people who were most over-stretched also happen to be relatively new joiners, and so they didn’t know that that wasn’t normal, a normal workload, and even if they suspected it wasn’t, they were trying to make a good impression in their first months or year at the company, and they didn’t raise their hand and notify anyone that they were just way too overstretched. And so, one of the solutions is collect the data and figure it out, empirically, what’s happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you said took a look at the data and ran the numbers, when you say collect the data, that’s kind of what I’m curious about is how robust is the tracking and recording of this sort of thing in organizations? In my experience, the answer is not very, so you kind of have to go build that from the ground up, or I have seen some pretty cool enterprise-wide systems that capture that stuff, although sometimes they’re gamed and not being accurately reported.

So, when you talk about the data and the numbers, I just want to get your sense for what are the systems and platforms by which that is readily obtained versus how are you building it from the ground up?

Heidi Gardner
So, the best data, I think, is not reported for this purpose because, you’re right, it’s either garbage data and people don’t get around to doing it so at the end of the month, they kind of make a guess.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, my timesheet. Yeah, typical report.”

Heidi Gardner
Yeah, exactly. Or, they game the system for whatever purposes they think works best for them. So, don’t collect data specifically for this purpose, besides it’s just one more admin thing that nobody wants to do. But there is a wealth of data inside many organizations that’s collected for other purposes that can be mined for these sorts of insights.

So, the obvious one is in professional service firms or other kinds of sales or project-based organizations. There are actually ways to track, say, on distribution list, or who’s submitting to certain expense codes, or who’s billing their time to certain files. There are lots of ways that are lots of data sources that are hidden in other kinds of repositories that can be mined for this.

In the biotech company, for example, they have to file a lot of paperwork for grant applications and compliance reasons, and those were actually brilliant project rosters. And so, if you’re creative, you can take a look inside databases that are capturing data for other purposes, and figure out who’s working on how many different things. Again, expense codes are a great one.

Another way to do it though is through a whole variety of platforms now that capture, essentially, network clusters inside firms. And so, you can see you have to make some inferences but you can see that if there are the same eight people emailing each other with similar subject matter, etc., or the same people in certain Teams groups in Microsoft Teams. Or, you can mine calendars for the kinds of meetings that people co-attend. And you use de-identify data so that you’re not actually snooping in what Joe or Jane is specifically doing but you’re looking at patterns. And the patterns are more important than any single individual.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s clever. I like it. Whether it’s from the emails or from the calendars, or from the expense codes, even if no one is judiciously carefully tracking where each hour of their day has gone, you can see what’s that involvement looking like and where and zeroing on some stuff. So, such a fun project on the, I guess, enterprise-wide scale. I’m curious about individuals, if we’re zooming into individuals and teams, what are some of the top do’s and don’ts you recommend they can start right away in terms of getting better collaboration?

Heidi Gardner
So, team leaders are, ultimately, responsible for the health and wellbeing and outputs of the group. And so, it starts with the team leader, first of all, getting some clarity on the degree to which each team member is already committed to other pieces of work. And perhaps even before composing the team, seeking out individuals who are not the usual suspects. Because if I need to think about project X, my mind will jump to certain people who have a reputation for doing that kind of project well or a piece of it.

Well, what if I went to that person, and instead of asking them to join my team, ask them for a recommendation of somebody whose competence they could vouch for who isn’t quite as busy as they are. Now, this hinges on people knowing the skills and quality levels of their colleagues, but especially on their willingness to let somebody else kind of take their “spot.”

And this falls to top leadership to make it a priority that says, “Busier is not better. Doing quality work is better.” But if there’s that kind of culture where people are willing to make referrals, the team leader should be asking not always the usual suspect but perhaps approaching that person with the strong reputation and asking for a referral to somebody else, maybe an up-and-comer, maybe somebody who’s new in the organization, maybe somebody for whatever reason, doesn’t have as widespread of a reputation but is still fully capable of doing the job.

So, get the right people on the team, make sure once you get the team together that you understand not only how many other pieces are they working on, but on a pretty granular level, “Where are we going to have some friction in the calendar?” This sounds like Project Management 101 but it’s astonishing how often this piece gets skipped.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Heidi Gardner
And once the leaders of the team understand that particular team members are going to be under really severe pressure at certain points, then it’s a question of rerouting the work, of approaching other leaders of teams and asking for some flexibility. It’s not leaving it up to the individual, and I think that’s a big problem in many teams, is that individual members feel like they either just need to suck it up and deal with it, or they’ll be perceived as not capable or strong, or that it’s up to them to kind of work the politics and figure out whose project to prioritize.

And that shouldn’t be the job of those individual team members. That should be something that the leader takes on his or her shoulders. And so, there’s an awareness there, there is a willingness to intervene when necessary, and I think everyone in the organization has to create the context where people feel comfortable raising their hand, and saying, “I’m overstretched. I’m not unwilling to do hard work and lots of work but, right now, the degree to which I’m spread across, taking that hard work and spreading across too many different initiatives is unproductive.” And that’s what we need people to identify.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, bringing some of these bits together, could you share with us a fun story or two of a team or organization that was having some disappointing collaboration, and then what they did to change things up and the cool results they gained from doing so?

Heidi Gardner
So, there’s a great experience I had working with the executive team of a huge global electronics manufacturer. And we were asked to work with them because they were really struggling on innovation as a company, and leading innovation as this executive team. So, my team and I worked with 35 top executives. They were the senior president of a certain division, or of a geographic area, or of a product line, or chief-level officers of functions.

And with them, we conducted a psychometric profile. So, we’ve developed this tool, this online tool, which allows people in just 10 minutes or so to complete a bunch of questions, and it provides them with real insight about their natural tendencies. All else equal, what kinds of problems are they drawn to? All else equal, how do they prefer to operate, in a group, or individually? Are they risk-seekers or risk-spotters?

And you might think, “Oh, we all know this,” but actually, we tend to have some blind spots. And so, what we did with this group from the electronics company is we gave them all this profile, this Smart Collaboration Accelerator, and, first, we shared with each individual where they came out. Then what we did is we analyzed the group, all 35 of them, to see what their collective profiles were.

And it turned out that 33 of the 35 were extreme risk-seekers. In other words, they were motivated not to miss a single opportunity, but there were two people on their team who were risk-spotters. They were the kinds of people who weren’t motivated to take opportunities. They were motivated not to fail, not to make mistakes, not to have anything blow up.

And when we revealed with this data, these were mostly kind of engineers and very quantitative people, and we could put the numbers in front of them that said, “Just on that one dimension, here’s what you look like as a group.” There was a bit of kind of nervous laughter and then the, “Ha-ha, do you think that’s why the regulators are crawling all over us and so forth?”

And then one guy kind of raised his hand, we were in a virtual meeting, he raised his hands on Zoom, and he said, “You never effing listen to me.” He’s like, “I’m that risk-spotter, and I keep telling you that we have these problems that are coming up, and nobody ever pays attention.” And his colleagues said…they kind of laughed, and they said, “Yeah, we hate listening to you. You’re such a downer.”

But it revealed two things to them. First, it revealed to them that they were, in fact, incredibly biased on that dimension, and that they were steamrollering the outlier. Rather than making the most of the diversity in that team, these two individuals who could have helped highlight some real problems before they emerged and blew up, they were majority-ruling and, basically, going with what everyone else who were these risk-seekers decided was better for the company.

And through this kind of conversation, it was like, “Well, all right, we need to make the most of the diversity on the team. Even when you don’t like to hear it, they’re probably telling you something really important. And, oh, by the way, if you’re one of those risk-spotters, you probably need to learn to raise issues in ways that those people can understand what you’re talking about, you’re not just shooting down every idea.”

But what was powerful as well is that the group then realized that, because they were so similar on multiple dimensions, there was something really flawed in the organizational processes that meant you kind of had to be one of these cowboys in order to make it onto X Co. And they looked back at all of the succession planning and everyone coming through the ranks, and they figured out that they were more or less weeding out people who didn’t fit the mold at most rungs of the organization.

And it was a very powerful experience for them, again, once they had the data in front of them, they could visually see how skewed they were in certain behavioral terms that it wasn’t productive for them and actually signaled more root-cause problems throughout a lot of their systems and processes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful, and a pattern, I think, we see quite often. I’m thinking about administering the Myers-Briggs type indicator to many groups, and it’s almost like folks are closeted, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m secretly an introvert, but it doesn’t feel like that really works here, so I put on my extrovert hat around the sales and marketing deal-maker-y people and do that, or I prefer sensing in terms of like getting to the real facts of things as opposed to always imagining these cool possibilities and ideas, and I get called a wet blanket and such.”

Heidi Gardner
Exactly. And what we have worked with groups on, and this can be corporate boards that are a dozen people, it can be functions and departments and business units, what we can do when we help people understand their own natural tendencies is to figure out how to use those as a strength, “How do you bring your voice into the room, especially if you’re the outlier? But, in any case, how do you interact with other people? How do you raise concerns? How do you spot opportunities? How do you engage with people and keep them motivated in ways that are really authentic to you?”

Because I think that is a problem where oftentimes people feel that they have to fit in, they have to mirror somebody else who’s already successful there, and they, of course, are facing a huge burden then because, by not being able to be themselves, it’s really quite painful and draining, but the organization loses out.

There are huge amounts of research showing that when you have people who are genuinely different from one another and can play to their unique strengths, they’re more innovative, they’re more likely to spot both problems and opportunities, they’re better able to customize and tailor solutions to complex problems.

And so, that feeling of needing to fit in, whether it’s how you look and dress and sound, or what kinds of problems you’re attracted to, not being able to foster diversity and true inclusion in terms of bringing those people’s diverse efforts into the room and valuing them, that’s a real process loss for a lot of organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you, well-said. Well, tell me, any key things, Heidi, you want to make sure to mention in terms of top do’s and don’ts for collaboration before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Heidi Gardner
Well, one of the most important things I think when an organization is embarking on this journey of smarter collaboration, they say, “Okay, I get it. We need to really leverage all of the different perspectives we’ve got. We need to break down some of the barriers and the silos inside this organization. How do we get started?”

And we have done research with well over 10,000 senior people across organizations around the planet, and we know there’s five, six, maybe seven common barriers that come up from one place to the next. But what’s unique is…or not unique probably because there’s not an infinite combination. But what’s different for each organization is the prevalence and the importance of those barriers.

And so, for example, one of the barriers is competence trust. If I’m going to bring you into my special cherished project, I have to believe in your competence. I have to think you deliver high-quality, on-time on-budget, that you’re actually really good at what you do, but it’s not enough. Another kind of trust is essential, that’s interpersonal trust. Even if I think you’re a guru but if I think you’re a jerk, I’m still not going to work with you. And so, we know that interpersonal trust, or lack of it, or lack of competence trust, those spring up in most organizations.

But, depending which one really matters, which one is really standing in the way of people working across silos, that is the factor that needs to determine what course of action you take. Because if you’re trying to generate greater competence trust amongst employees, you’re going to go down a path of maybe learning and development, and helping people establish some curiosity in what other people do, and helping people hone their elevator pitch so when they’re talking to somebody, they can describe in compelling ways how they add value to problem-solving or whatever. But if you need to fix interpersonal trust, you need to go down a completely different route.

And so, the point of this is anyone looking to improve smarter collaboration in their organization, they have to start with a database diagnostic. They have to have some objective way of figuring out what stands in between them and really effective collaboration, and then make sure that the solutions they’re developing are tailored to those problems.

Because, all too often, we have worked with leaders who say, “I know exactly what’s wrong here,” and, actually, most leaders are pretty biased in their views of what goes on inside the organization. Nobody refuses to collaborate with the CEO, go figure. So, they don’t see that it’s a major problem, and they don’t understand how their position of authority and a whole lot of other things actually skews their perception of what stands in the way for an average person inside the organization. So, I would say find ways.

We have a toolkit coming out. We codified a methodology to do this after five or six years of doing it ourselves. We’ve now created a toolkit that will be published by Harvard Business Press as companion to our book, where people can use this methodology. We tell people in a very step-by-step kind of way how do you collect the data, how do you analyze it, how do you draw conclusions from it, how do you present it back to executives, and what do you do about it. And I’m hoping that that’s what people use in order to really create and craft a collaborative solution that will drive the kinds of outcomes that we know are advantages of smarter collaborations.

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

Heidi Gardner
My favorite quote is the one that we used as the dedication in our new book. We’ve dedicated the book to our two daughters Anya and Zoe, and all of the smarter collaborators of their generation. And the quote we used is, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” And that quote really resonates for us in this rush, rush world wherein sometimes we feel like taking shortcuts, and, “It’s just going to be better if I crack on and do it myself.” And that works some of the time, but if what you really need is a great solution, if you really want to go far, finding ways to engage in smarter collaboration is absolutely essential.

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

Heidi Gardner
One of my most recent favorite studies was done by Dr. Randall Peterson who’s a professor at London Business School, and he engaged in a very ambitious study of corporate boards.

And so, these individuals, board chairs and independent directors participated in his research and went through this rigorous methodology where they helped him understand in very objective ways what were the dynamics inside the board.

For example, he found that boards that are truly inclusive of women have much better and very different styles of problem-solving and conflict resolution. So, for example, boards that are very male-dominated tend to vote and to cut short discussion and majority rules, and it stamps out dissent and curtails the discussion of unpopular options or opinions. Whereas, boards that are more inclusive of women tend to talk things through in a more substantive and holistic way.

And fascinating discovery is that boards, therefore, with more women on them and where women’s opinions and contributions were more valued, actually were linked to significantly less shareholder dissent. Now, shareholder dissent is something that every corporate board cares about because if their shareholders are creating formal actions saying that they don’t have faith in the way that the board has operated, that’s hugely problematic for governance.

And Dr. Peterson’s research was able to link the way the boards interacted with the gender composition with that very important outcome. And it was a first, not only in the corporate board space but also in helping us understand why it is that gender inclusion is so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Heidi Gardner
I’m going to go way back to a book that was incredibly eye-opening for me. It was called The Russians by Hedrick Smith. And I read this book when I was 15 or 16 years old, so that was in the mid ‘80s, and it was the height of the Cold War. And I had only ever thought about the Russians as a block of people, sort of the Commies, the bad guys. They were featured in all of the movies as the one that Rocky wanted to pummel, or the idea that the US hockey team had to beat the Russians.

And I read this book as part of a summer program that I was about to attend, and it opened my eyes to the idea that the Russians weren’t a monolithic block. They were humans just like all of us Americans. And although it’s incredibly simplistic conclusion, for me, having grown up in Amish country in Pennsylvania, where it was not the most open society or community, and we looked at anybody who was foreigner with a fair degree of suspicion, humanizing the “enemy” was incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Okay. And can you share with us a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Heidi Gardner
Well, I have to go back to the Smart Collaboration Accelerator. It’s not just because we developed it. It’s the psychometric tool that’s science-backed, and it has helped so many organizations and teams and leaders fulfill their potential. It’s incredibly powerful. And we’ve now got 150 people around the world, accredited coaches and professional facilitators and consultants who are trained up in using it. And we are bringing the power of those improved dynamics and self-awareness to create smarter collaborators in a whole range of industries and generations.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Heidi Gardner
It’s hardly novel but exercise is my favorite habit, particularly walking. And I walk as much as I can, even conduct most of my internal meetings and some of my external ones from my treadmill. There’s a fair amount of good research that suggests that walking helps to stabilize some of the rhythms in the brain.

There’s a great deal of research that shows that walking is related to expansive thinking. And I didn’t know the research when I got so into walking, but started holding walking meetings with colleagues, and with family members, and with a whole variety of people where we would try to hash through different kinds of ideas. And now when I get to a new place, walking is the first thing that I try to do. And if I am stuck on a problem, I get on the treadmill.

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

Heidi Gardner
One nugget that came out of our research, we did a study of how smarter collaboration benefits individuals. And, initially, it looked as if people who had bigger networks were better off. And as we dug further, we realized that bigger isn’t better, better is better. And we can now quantify what it takes to make a better network in smarter collaboration terms, and it means accessing a variety of different kinds of not only experts but people who think really differently about problems and about solutions.

And it also means keeping ties open, at least to a small degree, so that you don’t need to be constantly in touch with people. They don’t need to be your best friends in order to contribute a brilliant idea, but they do need to be just warm enough that if you ring them up, or drop them an email, or however people communicate, that they’re going to respond and they’re going to help you solve that problem, or they’re going to give you their own nugget that will help you break through.

And that idea that people don’t need big networks, introverts make brilliant high-quality networks, and they don’t need to be the life of the party. So, the idea is better is better when it comes to forming a network, and the diversity is really key there.

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

Heidi Gardner
Our website is GardnerAndCo.co, and we have all of our studies and our books up there. And speaking of books, our new one Smarter Collaboration has just come out, and we encourage people to take a look at that as well.

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

Heidi Gardner
I want people to take a few minutes every week and just reflect on whether anything has surprised them. This is a question I ask my executive participants in programs at Harvard. I teach at the Business School and the Law School at Harvard, and, usually, by sort of day three or four of a program, I ask “What surprised you about being here on this program?” And often people are stumped but then the ideas start to flow.

And what we realized is asking about surprises forces people to confront what they have taken for granted or what they had expected. And I encourage people to stop every week at some point and just look around and say, “What has surprised me in the last few days?” because that will challenge us to think about what we do take for granted, what we had expected to happen, and it will raise our antenna up to being more curious about the world.

It will prompt us to ask better questions or engage in conversations that might take us to places that we weren’t open to hearing before, or we might tune in to a different kind of podcast, or a different news station, or new source that we would, otherwise. And if we seek out surprises, I think it really opens our mind. That will be the challenge I’d offer up to people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Heidi, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun collaborations.

Heidi Gardner
Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure.

821: How to Keep Calm and Defuse Tensions in Conflict with Hesha Abrams

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Master attorney mediator Hesha Abrams shares her tried-and-tested strategies for navigating conflict with ease.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to actually calm people down in an argument 
  2. The four part process to defuse any situation
  3. The magic phrases that help any conflict 

About Hesha

Hesha Abrams is an internationally acclaimed master attorney mediator, with a unique talent to manage big egos and strong personalities and a keen ability to create synergy amongst the most diverse personality types, driving them toward agreement. Specializing in crafting innovative solutions for complex or difficult matters, Hesha has resolved thousands of cases in every conceivable area during her career including over the secret recipe for Pepsi. She coaches executives in politically difficult situations to prevent conflict and speed resolution.

Resources Mentioned

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Hesha Abrams Interview Transcript

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

Hesha Abrams
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear some of your wisdom about Holding the Calm: The Secret to Resolving Conflict and Defusing Tension. Could you start us with one of the most tense situations, negotiations, mediations you found yourself plunged into, and tell us the juicy dramatic details of the story?

Hesha Abrams
Oh, goodness. I have so many, it’s hard to choose. But the one that people seem to like the most is that I mediated over the secret recipe for Pepsi.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, do you know the secret recipe for Pepsi?

Hesha Abrams
I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Hesha Abrams
I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it just carbonated water and high fructose corn syrup?

Hesha Abrams
No, I’m sworn to secrecy. I’m sworn to secrecy. But what’s interesting is that the recipe is different in different parts of our country and in different parts of the world. So, what it really is, is a trademark for Pepsi, Coke, things like that. It’s really their trademark that they have to protect so they can’t allow anybody to use a recipe and then change the trademark and be, let’s say, “Pakistani Poopsi tastes like Pepsi.” And that would be disastrous.

And so, that was a very juicy, very interesting case. But I’ve done cases for Google, and Facebook, and Verizon, and Yahoo, and Nvidia, and IBM, and Microsoft, and all the major players, and then tens of thousands of individuals trying to find some level of justice. And that’s why I joke when you said, “Share your wisdom.” What I want to say is it’s battle-tested.

I have been boots not only on the ground but in the trenches of human conflict with blood and guts on my boots. And there’s lots of good books out there that talk about theory and philosophy and ideas about resolving conflict but I wanted to write a tool book, “What do I do with my idiot brother-in-law?” “What do I do with this horrible boss?” “What do I do with this terrible neighbor, or friend, or supplier, or client?” fill in the blank. What are the things you can do right now to improve the situation?

And, literally, that’s why I wrote the book. This shouldn’t be for professionals only. This should be for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful stuff. And, Hesha, we can edit this out if we need to, but am I to understand you’ve literally had human entrails on your boots in a wartime scenario?

Hesha Abrams
No, I’m being very overly literal, and I like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, there’s a dramatic story. I think that’s the one maybe that we needed to…all right. We’ll see.

Hesha Abrams
We should not edit that out. That’s terrific. But I have had people spit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Hesha Abrams
I’ve had people get into a fistfight. I had two oilmen once that were both billionaires fighting over, whatever it was, I don’t know, $10, $20 million, which is pocket change to them, want to come to blows, and I literally put my body in between them. So, things get pretty intense when you’re dealing with amygdalas being triggered and bumper kart egos, and, “Mine, and you’re not going to take mine.” Well, we act at our most cavemen/cavewoman best, is what we do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Hesha Abrams
And it’s normal. Every single one of us. You poke on amygdala enough; people are going to roar. And so, the question is, “What do you do when someone’s poking you? What do you do when you want to poke someone else? How do you get out of it?” That’s the thing, is how do you freaking get out of it? And I have easy tools, easy ways to do it, and I’m so glad your listeners are listening so we can talk about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m glad, too. So, tell us, is there anything that’s particularly counterintuitive or that most of us get wrong in our conception of conflict?

Hesha Abrams
Yes, and that’s a great question. So, let me give you an analogy that I use. Spaghetti sauce. You drop it on the counter, you take a wet sponge, you wipe it right off. No big deal. You leave it overnight; you’re scraping it off with a spatula. You leave it three or four months, it’s old and moldy and nasty. And that, my friends, is conflict.

And so, why don’t we just wipe it up when it’s wet? That would be so easy. Well, we don’t because we’re afraid, we don’t know how. We’re afraid it will get worse, we’re afraid to know how to handle it, and so we close our eyes kind of ostrich-like, and just hope it’ll go away, and hope it’ll get better. And I’m here to tell you it doesn’t get better. It just gets old and moldy and nasty, and it finds a way to erupt at the most inopportune times because all conflicts, 100% of it starts with tension. Every single one.

Even if it’s the silent, “Mm-hmm” thing. We just don’t notice it because we’re not trained, we’re not taught, we don’t have these Holding the Calm tools to know how to wipe the spaghetti sauce off when it’s wet, so it’s harder, it’s older, and nastier and harder. And to stay with the analogies, sometimes people pee in their own bathtub, and you can’t get it out. You got to drain the whole tub. So, how can you avoid it and then how can you drain the tub when you actually need to? So, those are analogies between spaghetti sauce and peeing in the bathtub people aren’t going to forget.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, just to be really clear here. I’m getting the message associated with the spaghetti sauce in terms of addressing it quickly. Now, the peeing in the tub, what are we saying there? It’s like that seems another metaphor. I’m thinking it’s like, “Oh, I shot myself in the foot,” but maybe you’re getting at it’s hard to separate urine from bathwater once they’re intermingled.

Hesha Abrams
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very visceral imagery. Thank you. Okay.

Hesha Abrams
Which means we won’t forget it. You’ll think about it now. We can always say, “Oh, don’t put your foot in your mouth,” right? But we all do, we’re all humans, and we do. What do we do to get out of it? How do we get out of the doghouse? How do we avoid getting in the doghouse to begin with? That’s what this Holding the Calm stuff is about. And it works with giant CEOs of giant Fortune 100 companies, global conglomerates.

Why? Because those guys and gals have egos just like the rest of us, and they want to win, and they want to not lose, and they want to look good just like if we’re fighting over a hundred bucks or a hundred million. It’s honestly the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, maybe before we go into some of the detail tools, is it a general principle, like the spaghetti sauce, you recommend we go ahead and address stuff quickly before it becomes extra, like it will have a tendency to grow nastier and more vitriolic over time? Is that the general pattern you see over and over again?

Hesha Abrams
Well, it depends. Yes, often that is the case, but a lot of times, just again, I give so many analogies because people will remember the analogies of what we talked about. Let’s say there’s a bomb in the town square. That guy waddles out his Michelin soup. He doesn’t just start cutting wires. He looks. He diagnoses it. Is it pressure switch? Is it chemical switch? What is it?

And what tends to happen is that we react, we don’t diagnose. We don’t take a step back. If I’m in conflict with an extrovert, that is going to be a different set of tools than when I’m in conflict with an introvert. Just that simple thing right there. Also, what if somebody is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner? That’s easy. It’s just one, two, three. And if I can give you a list, there’s an example of that. It’s paying attention to the verbs.

“So, I see what you’re saying. That looks good to me,” somebody is a visual learner, I’m going to use visual cues with them. “I hear what you’re saying. That sounds right to me,” they’re an auditory learner, I’m going to speak auditory words to them. Kinesthetic means that you touch and you feel, and they’re going to say, “I don’t get it,” or, “That doesn’t feel right to me,” or, “It’s not good in my gut.” All right, that’s a kinesthetic learner.

So, when I’m talking to them, it’s just like, a Samsung versus an iPhone. They’re both smartphones but completely different operating systems. So, when you’re interacting with someone, the first thing you do, like the bomb detector, is you look at them, you listen to them, you let them talk for a minute. And while they’re talking, you’re listening to content, of course, but I’m going to say to myself, “Are they introvert or extrovert? And are they a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner?” That’s it.

Now, I have a wealth of knowledge. Which tool am I going to use? Am I going to use a scalpel or am I going to use a sledgehammer? Am I going to delay or am I going to push? Am I going to deal with feelings and emotions or am I going to deal with tasks, process? It’s not hard once you know to look for that, and that’s what I go over in Holding the Calm is the easy simple ways to be able to do that, and sentence them so that you can just simply ask, and then people will reveal themselves to you easily.

And then when you respond to them in their own operating system, they’re not going to say, “Oh, thank you for noticing that I’m a visual learner and speaking to me in visual words.” No, they’re just going to go, “He gets me,” “She gets it,” “I feel heard. I can trust her,” “I can believe in him. He’s got integrity.” That’s what they’re going to say.

And all it is is that you met them where they were. You hit them with their frequency, and you resonated with them. And all it takes is a few moments of holding the calm, stepping back, and diagnosing. And it’s incredibly simple. And that’s what some of the things that I lay out in Holding the Calm.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so we take a step back, we listen, we diagnose, we see, “Are they introverted, extroverted? Are they visual, auditory, or kinesthetic?” And then we just use those types of words or visually words versus auditory words? And just like that we have an extra degree of rapport in the room?

Hesha Abrams
Indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that sounds easy.

Hesha Abrams
Indeed. It honestly is.

So, there’s a corollary story that I wanted to add here. I heard this on NPR’s Hidden Brain. There was a couch company that sold bespoke customized couches, $20,000 and $30,000 for a couch, custom arms, custom piping, custom fabric, blah, blah. People will go through the process, and a huge percentage of them at the point of sale would not complete the sale. Well, the company was very frustrated.

So, what do we normally do when we have a problem? I joked that we have flat foreheads because we smash our heads against the wall all the time. So, you usually have gas in the car or you have a brake. And what we usually do is we do gas, we push forward. So, the company did more sales, more promotion, more discount, more marketing, and it didn’t do anything.

Finally, they put on the brake. Remember the bomb detector analogy I gave everybody, stepping back and diagnosing? And they had somebody call all the people that didn’t complete the point of sale, the vast, vast majority. Do you know why they didn’t buy this $20,000 couch? Because they didn’t know what to do with the old couch.

So, the solution now is obvious. “When you buy the new one, we take away the old one,” but it didn’t dawn on them because they hadn’t taken the time to diagnose and to find out and to put the brakes on. That’s a huge beautiful example of holding the calm.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re a pro.

Hesha Abrams
So, one of the things, the way I designed the book is I didn’t want to make 15 volumes. I’ve got 35 years, like I said, in the trenches of doing this. What would be immediately accessible for people? So, I wrote 20 tools in 20 chapters, each one with stories and anecdotes. And I’m going to give some of them today on our talk, and I give them away to people. I say, “Take my stories. These are battle tested. They work. Use them with other people.”

Just imagine what happens. Somebody says something, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to school you. We’re going to tell you where you’re wrong, how you analyze it incorrectly. We’re going to bring you additional data. And everything we’re doing is like that finger-in-the-air schoolmarm going, “You’re not right.” And what does the person do? He just shuts down, not listening to a doggone thing you say because no one, even if they are wrong, responds to that. It’s just not going to happen.

So, what you do is you build some kind of rapport, and you can do it with, “Oh, well, you’re a golfer, I’m a golfer,” “We both like to bake.” But then the person has to be self-revealing to tell you stuff about themselves, and in conflict, they’re not going to. So, all you have to do is listen, like that bomb detector in the town square, and as they’re talking, you’re going to hear these things. So, now, I know how to speak to you. Now, you feel listened to and heard. Your amygdala calms the heck down because never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.

And they actually train cops and police officers in that. You don’t walk into a volatile situation and say, “Calm down. Calm down.” All you’re saying to somebody is, “Whoa, you’re out of control. You don’t know what you’re doing. I do. I’m going to take power and control from you,” which just freaks them out more. So, you back off, let the person breathe, lets you breathe, and, now all of a sudden, you’re an ally instead of an enemy, and all kinds of magical cool stuff can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds beautiful. Can we dig into some of these 20 tools? Are there a few that leap to mind in terms of having a really good bang for the buck in terms of, “Oh, this is not very hard, and yet it makes a world of difference in these situations”?

Hesha Abrams
Indeed. So, chapter one is speaking to the ears that are hearing you, and that we just talked about and there’s more, obviously, than what I can do right here, but that’s at least giving you a start. Let me give you an advanced technique that’s not as easy. It takes a little more effort but not very much, and everyone is going to laugh when I say this. If you’re dealing with somebody difficult, VUC them. I was going to with…

Pete Mockaitis
With a V.

Hesha Abrams
Yeah, “What did she just say?” I’m going to say, yeah, you VUC them because they can’t VUC themselves. And it’s V-U-C-S, and I came up with that purposely because everyone knows what they’re thinking they thought I said. Now, you won’t forget it. So, V-U-C-S. The V is validate, the U is understand, the C is clarify, the S is summarize.

It’s a four-part process to defuse anything. And when I say anything, I’m not using hyperbole. Anything. I’ve mediated multibillion-dollar cases. And late at night, you know what we’re talking about? The CEO is asking me about his idiot brother-in-law that he’s got to deal with, or a problem at work, or a problem with his private school kid’s coach, a Lacrosse team or something like that, and how does he handle that. That’s what we’re talking about.

So, this is a human being thing. It works for all of us. And that V of the validate is the number one. It’s the WD40 of interpersonal relations. But where it gets hard is that if you can validate, sure, go ahead, “I see your point of view. I can understand why you’re so upset. What happened to you was wrong,” blah, blah, blah. But let’s do the advanced class. Let’s say you can’t do that because you think the other person is wrong or an idiot or arrogant, self-righteous, stubborn, misguided, I mean, fill in the blank with whatever you want. How do you validate then?

Here’s the trick. You name the emotion. That’s all you got to do, “Wow, you sound angry.” “I’m not angry, I’m frustrated.” “Okay, you’re frustrated.” Now, I got data, don’t I? “Okay, help me see that. I want to understand.” Now, I’m going to say, “Help me see that,” if they’re a visual person; “I want to hear more about that,” if they’re an auditory person; “I want to understand that more,” if they’re a kinesthetic person.

And I’m just listening to them, and then using verbs. Literally, verbs. And someone may say listening to us, “Ugh, that sounds a lot of work. That’s too much.” Really? I can do it in two minutes. Or, you can spend the next hour fighting with somebody. What’s less work? And by starting with just the V, validate if you can, and if you can’t, just name the emotion, hear what they’re saying, let them talk. Then the U is the understanding part.

Unless someone is completely psychotic, really ridiculously psychotic, they have a point. You may not agree, you may not understand it, but they have a perspective and they have a point. So, dismissing them as, “Well, you’re just an idiot,” or, “You’re stupid,” or, “You’re misguided,” or blah, blah, blah, and, unless again, they’re psychotic, they’ve got a point I want to understand so I’m going to ask some questions.

And I have all kinds of sentence stems in the book that I tell people, write them down on a Post-it note and stick it by your phone or your computer, or put it in a note in your phone so you have it at the ready when something like this happens. And they’re wonderful because they just let people start to talk, and that’s the U for understand. Because when you do that for somebody, they’re going to feel understood.

Then the C is to clarify, just ask questions, “Okay, how would that work? Under what circumstances would that happen? Does that always happen?” those kinds of questions. Then, at the end, you can summarize, “Okay, so what you’re concerned about is this, and you feel like it’s unfair, or you don’t like the way this happened, and you’re looking for this kind of a response.”

In a complicated situation, that’ll take me 40, 45 minutes. In a more simple situation, 15, literally. Or, you can spend the next two days fighting with somebody.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, the whole V-U-C-S taking 15 to 45?

Hesha Abrams
It depends on the complexity of the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you.

Hesha Abrams
And how well you do it, quite frankly. The better you do it, the quicker and easier it is. And the bonus is, at the end, the person is not going to hate you, they’re not going to think you’re awful, or you’re dismissive, or you’re disrespectful, or you’re offensive, or all the other things that people think when they’re not listened to. They’re going to feel like, “You get it.”

And often the position will soften because someone is actually listening to them. And people will start to say things, like, “I know I said that but, you know, it’s not really that bad,” only because you defused the tension. You wiped the spaghetti sauce up when it’s wet. You off-gassed the tank so that it wouldn’t explode. Just that simple stuff is wet-spaghetti-sauce wiping, which maybe should be the title of the next book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perhaps. And can you give us some examples of these stems?

Hesha Abrams
It depends on the situation. That’s why I have them divided throughout the book because it depends on the situation. So, let’s say you’re having to deal with somebody that is just obnoxious, or all of these DEI stuff we’re talking about these days. You think he’s racist, or sexist, or homophobic, and they’re just saying stuff, and you’re taken aback. You don’t know what to say or how to say it.

You can say, “Did you intend to offend me with that statement?” You will see backpedaling like you don’t want to know. No one’s going to answer, “Yes, I intended to offend you,” right? And if they are, then I’m going to VUC them, I’m going to say, “Well, you’re really passionate about that. I want to understand why.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Hesha Abrams
Now, all of a sudden, I have another tool that I can use. And let me give your listeners what to do at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas dinner table with that one relative that just always says nasty stupid stuff, either because they really mean it or because they just like to get your goat, and you know that happens at the table.

A great one is to turn to them and say, “Do you know what I admire about you?” Freeze. Everybody pauses. That guy will pause, ears, boing, are going to open, and then you can say anything you want, “Your passion, your curiosity, your ability to hear both sides of an issue,” whatever you want to say, there’s no retort to that, there’s no answer to that, so it stops and everyone else around the table will smile and nod, and say, “Thank you for shutting that down,” and then you go back to eating turkey.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m thinking if it’s the person who just says stuff, it could just be, “Your courage. I would feel sheepish and embarrassed to spout the things that you’re saying.” I guess you don’t say it that way. But I guess that is something I would admire in terms of I tend not to say things that will trouble people willy-nilly because I’m scared.

Hesha Abrams
But that’s the whole reason why I wrote Holding the Calm for everybody because that’s the wet spaghetti sauce. We don’t say anything because we’re scared and we don’t know how to do it. But if you say to somebody, “You know what I admire about you?” how is that bad? It stops the conversation immediately.

And then find something to fill it in with, “That you’re so passionate,” or, “That you’re so punctual, you’re always on time,” or, “You always dress so well,” or, “You bring the best potato casserole,” or, or, or, whatever you can actually say. You can make it harder and firmer or you can make it gentle and easy, but either way, it stops because nobody is going to say, “Oh, I don’t want to hear the rest of that sentence.” “What I admire about you,” “What I respect about you,” “What I like about you,” nobody is going to say, “Eh, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it doesn’t need to be at all related, it doesn’t need to be at all directly related to what they’ve just mentioned?

Hesha Abrams
Exactly, isn’t that great?

Pete Mockaitis
You could just absolutely, “You’ve got great taste in earrings.” Okay.

Hesha Abrams
And it shuts it down because, let’s say it’s something weird like that, “You have great taste in earrings.” How do you respond to that? What are you suppose to say? It just stops the conversation. So, holding the calm is pragmatic. It’s not Kumbaya, “Let’s hold hands and walk through the meadow together.” We live in a jungle, there’s predators out there, there’s real-world stuff we have to deal with.

So, I wanted to make this book extremely practical for real-world stuff. So, sometimes all I want to do is get you to stop because that’s all I can do. Sometimes I want to get you to understand. Sometimes I want to get to make a cold peace with you. Sometimes I want to get to make a warm peace with you. I want correct a misunderstanding, repair a relationship, move us forward. That’s sort of the spectrum.

You choose whatever it is you want to do, whatever your courage wants to do, whatever your need is. Maybe you only see this person once a year at the holiday dinner, or you don’t have to see your boss very much, or your neighbor, or, let’s say, your spouse, those kinds of things. You figure out what it is you want and then apply it however you want.

And then what you’ll find is it’s so easy that the more you do it, you’ll say, “Oh, hot darn, those were like magic beans. They worked. All right, I’m going to try something else. Oh, look at that.” That’s how it actually happens. I got 30 years of doing this, and I’m telling you the same techniques I’m teaching all of you. I walk into a conference room, and one guys says, “Give me $100 million,” and the other guy says, “Here’s $100,000, hands down.” How do I solve that?

Everyone’s got fancy schmancy lawyers, they went to Ivy League schools, that are everyone smart, and they’re arguing over all kinds of stuff. How do I get that settled? With all the stuff I’m telling you, because it’s human beings, whether you’re wearing a T-shirt or a $5,000 suit. It’s exactly the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then it sounds like, in that particular scenario that you highlighted, in terms of there’s a huge gap associated with the financials that people are willing to go for, you’re not so much, it sounds like, getting into the particulars of how one arrives in an appropriate dollar amount technically, financially speaking, so much as the human emotional side of things. Is that fair to say?

Hesha Abrams
Again, I hate to keep saying it depends on the circumstances. That’s why I go through that in the book so that it’s not one-size-fits-all. Let me give you another example. There’s a guy named Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and they were psychologists. And before them, Adam Smith’s rational man was the way economics was built. Human beings are rational, we make rational decisions, it’s all databased. And those of us in the social sciences know that’s just not true. It’s just not true.

Well, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proved it mathematically and scientifically, and they won a Nobel Prize in economics for proving that. And it’s absolutely brilliant how they do it, and so I’ll give you a quick short example. Bananas, 25 cents each. I’d buy a couple. I’m going to make a banana bread. Bananas, four for a dollar, 35% boost in sales.

Now, that’s just dumb. Why would it make any difference at all, and you want an extra 10% boost in sales? Limit two. That guys is going to knock at my bananas. I may have two bananas that rot and get all brown and nasty, and I got to throw them away. But look at that, how it works on the human brain. And people that are trying to sell us, the data people, the retailers, they know this stuff. That’s why you see price points the way you do.

It used to be that 4.99, people will see it as $4 not $5. $499, they will see it as $400 not $500. Even at 4,000 versus 5,000, that’s how the human brain works. Now, we can say, “Oh, you wouldn’t fool me with that. I look at 499 and I know it’s 500 bucks. I get that.” Not your brain, not the part of your brain that makes decisions. It will see it as, “Ah, that’s pretty reasonable, it’s about 400 bucks.” No, it’s not. It’s 500.

But that’s why they keep doing it that way because they know how we think. And you know who are masters at this kind of stuff? Casino owners. Do you ever notice in a casino, there’s no clocks, there’s no windows? They want to have people not know what time it is and not have anything about the outside world. They want them completely total captive audiences, and the drinks flow freely. That’s not because they’re being generous.

They want to keep you at the table because they know the odds are they, of course, are going to win, and they’ve absolutely figured out mathematically how often the slot machines need to ching, ching, ching, ching, ching and have somebody win, and how little they can have the win before it will hit the dopamine receptors in their brain like a chicken in a pen hitting that pellet to get that pellet out, they know it mathematically. That’s how amazing it is because we take human beings, and we put electrodes all over their heads, and shove them in MRIs. We know all kinds of stuff about the human brain works.

Scientifically, it’s just that normal people haven’t been able to catch up to how it is so we still think, “All right, you know, bananas, four for a dollar, that’s a good deal, even though I only need two.” So, to understand how human beings think, honestly, is a way to serve them better. Now, of course, people can manipulate, a fork can be used to eat or stab you, so every tool can be used different ways.

What I try to do in Holding the Calm is it’s very ethical and there’s high integrity to it, and the basis of it is service, “How can I serve you better by understanding you, by being on the same wavelength as you?” It’s better for a negotiation, it’s better for problem-solving, it’s better for team building. This kind of stuff is used for all of that. All of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’d also love to hear a little bit more about some particular words and phrases. We’ve heard some about matching the visual versus auditory versus kinesthetic. We heard saying “Calm down” never does the trick. And we’ve heard “You know what I admire about you…” is magic. Any other magical words, phrases that you love or really hate?

Hesha Abrams
So, I have a whole chapter on percentages which I find so interesting. People will speak in superlatives or in generalities, “We always do this. We never do that.” And 20 years ago, I’ve done a lot of…I probably made 10,000 speeches in my life, and I’ve consulted and trained all over the world. I’ve done a lot of this stuff. And I would have big groups, and I could guinea pig and try different new things and see how they would work.

And so, one day, I just thought of that. And so, I had a large group, and I said, “What percentage of the time does always mean?” And then I had people write it down, and then we facilitated up in the front on a big flipchart. Always goes from 100% down to like 65. Now, the people that say always is a 100 think the 65-ers are idiots. And the 65-ers think the 100s are extreme.

How about with never? You think never is zero? Au contraire, monsieur. It is not. To a lot of people, never is 20%, maybe even 25%. The same with rarely and a lot. So, I have a whole thing in there where I call it “Always Never, Rarely A Lot.” People will use those four words all the time. And by all the time, I mean 100% of the time.

So, if somebody is being adamant with you, “We never do that,” let’s say you want to return something, you just practice easy negotiation, and you go return something at a store, “We never do that.” “Oh, what percentage of the time is never?” “Well, it’s like 80%.” “Oh, so what are the exceptions that fall into the 20%?” Bing, bing, bing, bing. Now, I got information. Now, I got data.

People will say that, “Oh, we never do salary raises,” or, “We always do salary raises, or salary evaluations at the end of the year.” “What percentage of the time is always?” Now, if you get 100%, okay, now, you have information and you can feel comfortable, “Right, it’s happening at the end of the year. Well, I think 75 or 80% of the time.” “Oh, so what do we do the other percentage of the time? What would be the reasons for that?”

Now, it’s a pathway in and you have information. And look at all you did. You asked a clarifying question, “What percentage of the time is always, never, rarely, a lot?” and you’ll like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, Hesha, well, one, that’s eye-opening, like, “Wow, I never would’ve guessed,” so that’s insightful and powerful right there. Thank you. I guess I’m thinking I am in the camp that always does mean 100% and never does mean zero percent. And if you asked me the clarifier, “What percentage is always?” I’m almost insulted, like, “Well, of course, it’s 100%. That’s why I said always. Otherwise, I would’ve said often or frequently or most of the time.”

Hesha Abrams
Isn’t that great?

Pete Mockaitis
And so, now I’m intrigued. That question doesn’t rub people the wrong way or do you have alternative variations you recommend?

Hesha Abrams
Well, what’s interesting is sometimes it does. And then let say it does, “Really?” and then you ask somebody else, “What percentage is always to you?” And, guaranteed, even with CPAs, even with accountants who are very numbers-oriented, it will vary. And then somebody else will say it. So, if you’re afraid you’ve got somebody like that, you ask a couple people in a room.

And it’s a technique that I use often if I have to do large groups or if I’m meeting with a board, for example, and I’ve got a bunch of people. I don’t want to say to people, “You know, we all have different perspectives, and we all think about things differently, and we have to be open to blah, blah, blah” That’s like nauseous. No one wants to hear that kind of garbage.

But I say, “You know what, who wants to do a fun little exercise?” No one’s going to say no, and I do this little exercise. And you can do it on one of the words. I would do it on at least two or you can do all four. And then as people go around the room, and they say different percentages, then somebody like you, Pete, will go, “Huh? What? No. You think that always is 80%? How can you think that?” “How can you not think that?”

And then, all of a sudden, a new interesting conversation opens up. And it’s a way of having people see for themselves we are very different. We think very differently. It’s not just a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, introvert, extrovert. Baskin and Robins have 32 flavors for a reason. There’s a lot of different things that people want.

And even something silly. Let’s say I’m in a more casual group and I want to do an icebreaker thing. I may say, “Okay, choose, salty or sweet?” And sometimes people go, “Huh? What?” “If you had to choose, potato chips, French fries, or cake cookies?” You will see people divide up instantly into their salty-sweet teams. Instantly.

And then you know what kind of happens? “That other guy across the room who I hate, he’s a salty and I’m a salty, he’s a sweet, I’m a sweet, are you kidding me? How can I have anything in common with that guy? And what if we’re the only two in the room that both think that? Oh, God, now I got commonality with that guy?” It begins to bridge some of that.

I’ll give one more thing just because I’ve done so much of this. I experiment and then I come up with new ways of trying to make these points because people will get it better if they can get it themselves. It’s the whole “teach them to fish, don’t give them a fish” thing. So, I once did this just on a lark, literally on a lark. I was on a big Zoom conference call probably 10 years ago. I was doing Zoom a long time ago, and I had all these people and they looked super bored and disinterested, and, “Okay, I’ve got to get these people attached.”

So, I said, “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” And everyone went through it, and, all of a sudden, people started having conversations because, “Ooh, the vanillas are purist,” or, “The chocolates like it to be decadent,” or some of them wanted the gooey, chocolatey, ribbony, nutty, rocky road-y thing. And then people couldn’t stop talking and it created this commonality between people.

And at the end of the training, when they did the evaluations and they’re all saying, “Oh, it was so great.” “What was your favorite part of it?” A huge percentage said the stupid little ice cream exercise that I literally made up on-the-fly. And that’s because it was so personal to them, “This is me. See me. Hear me. Validate me. And now let me bond with you. I don’t care what I bond over. It’s ice cream.” It’s a sports team, it’s a politician, it’s a food restaurant.

Human beings have this clannish desire to bond and connect with each other. And when you create and foster ways for that to happen, I’m telling you, barriers fall down, things break down. It doesn’t have to be this big huge fancy schmancy stuff. In fact, the big huge fancy schmancy stuff doesn’t really work. It’s too big. It’s really the small.

I have a whole chapter in the book that I call “Small Winnable Victories,” that you don’t solve problems with big huge things. You solve them brick by brick, stone by stone. You dissolve problems from the outside so that they melt in. You create commonalities to where, “You know, I really thought I hated you and you were an idiot. But it turns out you’re not so bad, you know.”

And I’ll give your listeners a quick easy, easy way to deal with somebody you absolutely dislike or despise, and you got to deal with them. Look at them, ask yourself one question, “Would they pull my kid out of a burning car?” And if the answer to that is yes, which 95% of the time it will be, they’re not so bad. There’s something redemptive.

And if, in fact, they did pull your kid out of a burning car, you’d have a very different relationship with them. So, we start from that place, and it just lets walls start to come down so solutions can be found, team building can happen. This stuff works, I’m telling you. It works.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s so funny, it’s like as I think about that question and folks I might be at odds with, it’s sort of like my bias is tilting or slanting me so it’s just like, “Okay, statistically, yeah, maybe 95% is probably the overall view. It’s like, but I’m really not so sure about this guy.”

Hesha Abrams
That’s marvelous. That’s marvelous because it means that you’re demonizing him or her unless and until they do something redemptive, and they may not, so you pretend. And if you can pretend, it’s like the placebo effect for your mind. If you pretend that they actually did do something redemptive, all it does is give you more avenues and ways to deal with them because in Alcoholics Anonymous, they have this great saying that says, and I’m not sure if they originated it or not but I’ve been told that, that, “Resentment is poison that you drink but expect the other guy to die.”

Think about how amazing that is. Poison that you drink but expect the other guy to die. And what happens with this paradigm-shifting technique I’m teaching you is it stops the poison, and you get to a point where, “You know, you’re still a jackass but you don’t bother me anymore, you don’t affect me anymore, you can’t harm me anymore.” There’s tremendous freedom and power in that. Tremendous. Tremendous.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Well, Hesha, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Hesha Abrams
Well, I wanted to remind people I created a website HoldingTheCalm.com. And my goal with this is to just get this out into the world because I feel like we were all cavemen, cavewomen shoving food in our face, and I want to give people a fork, a knife, a spoon, chopsticks so we have better ways to handle things.

So, I put all my podcasts on there. I’m doing webinars. And I’m just putting everything free. Just download it and take it. And I’m doing this little one-minute videos. So, people don’t have time, and we’re all so busy, so it’s a quick one little minute video on a little topic with one of these techniques or one of these ideas that you can like or forward it onto someone else, and say, “Hey, this might be good for you, too.”

So, I have that, and I have a discussion guide in the back of the book. And, originally, the folks wanted me to sell that as a separate workbook, and I refused. I said, “No, I’m giving this away for free, and I want it in the back of the book,” so that if you’re an organization, or a company, or a church, or a homeowners’ association, or a family, any group of people, and everyone gets the book, you can go through the discussion guide which is like five pages, so it’s nothing.

And you just start asking questions of each other, then it makes it real, and it makes it to be, “What percentage is always for you? What percentage is it for the other guy? Really? How can you think always is 80%? I don’t understand that.” Then you’ll learn something about them. They’ll learn something about you. It creates this team-building bonding thing that actually creates a little bit of Teflon against conflict, which is really pretty magical.

So, that’s why I did it that way because my goal is to just get it out there and help people learn to do this better because we don’t teach this in school. We’ve got people running around shooting people because they’re so angry and mad, and write nasty things on social media because there’s no off-casting valve. So, anyway, this is my little tiny contribution within my sphere of influence to try to help make the world a little bit more harmonious, so that’s my message. And if it resonates with you guys, please, take it, use it.

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

Hesha Abrams
Well, I’m a major Trekkie, so I love Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he said, “Only impossible until it’s not.” And I like that. And I would tell you, I have one more that I put in the book, actually, both of those are in the book. My husband has a friend who’s a Navy Seal, and Navy Seals, as part of their training, have to tread water for, like, ever, and they’re supposed to do it until they die is the concept.

And so, my husband asked this guy, “So, how long can you tread water?” He said, “I don’t know, I’m not dead yet.” And I think about that, at least for myself and for everyone else, “How big can I get? How smart can I get? How loving can I get? How forgiving can I get? How graceful can I get? I don’t know, I’m not dead yet.”

And I feel like if we all sort of be continuous learners, which everyone has to be listening to your podcast, they’re continuous learners, and they’re committed awesome people or they wouldn’t be listening to this kind of podcast, how big is big? I don’t know, I’m not dead yet. So, let’s get big, everybody. That’s the goal. That’s my little inspirational speech for the day.

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

Hesha Abrams
Well, I love the Daniel Kahneman-Amos Tversky thing. I love there’s a chapter in the book I have on politeness and stability matters because there was a study done in England, literally, scientifically, about “Does politeness actually get you anything? Can it actually work?” And it does. And they figured out, neuroscientists have found that there’s 187 cognitive biases in our brains, and one of them is called the bias of reciprocity.

And, again, unless you’re a sociopath, and you’re just like a normal person, which is the vast majority of us, if I do something for you, you kind of feel compelled to do something back for me. You get invited into someone’s house for dinner, you bring a bottle of wine or flowers. There’s this, “I don’t want to be in debt to you. I want to do that.” That’s what politeness does. Simply being polite and civil in engenders politeness and civility back. And I love that study.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite book?

Hesha Abrams
Oh, God, I have to many. Should I be a dork and talk about my Star Trek books that I read like candy? I consume the right candy.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. What’s the dorkiest Star Trek book you own?

Hesha Abrams
Oh, God, they’re all marvelous. I just got done finished reading one on Kathryn Janeway called Mosaic by Jeri Taylor that was just fantastic. I really like that one. But I read a lot of neuroscience stuff. I just got done with Erik Barker’s Plays Well with Others which was just fantastic, really marvelous. I read – what was that other book about – Influence by Robert Cialdini, of course, is marvelous, the Ken Blanchard books are always good because they’re trying to make the world a better place. So, I have the nonfiction stuff that I enjoy, and then I have my guilty pleasures.

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

Hesha Abrams
HoldingTheCalm.com, it’s got everything you need.

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

Hesha Abrams
Oh, what a great question that is. The Navy Seal analogy. I would suggest that what you do is write down on a piece of paper why you’re good at your job. What is it that makes you good at your job? And then, tomorrow, do it better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Hesha, thanks. This has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and fun in your conflict resolving.

Hesha Abrams
Thanks so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

819: How to Stop Avoiding Conflict with Sarah Noll Wilson

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Sarah Noll Wilson shows how avoidance harms work and relationships.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The many consequences of avoiding conflict
  2. The key to overcoming avoidance
  3. How to train your body’s fight-or-flight response

About Scott

Through her work as an Executive Coach, an in-demand Keynote Speaker, Researcher, Contributor to Harvard Business Review, and Bestselling Author of “Don’t Feed the Elephants”, Sarah Noll Wilson helps leaders close the gap between what they intend to do and the actual impact they make. She hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations”, is certified in Co-Active Coaching, Conversational Intelligence, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health. 

With 15+ years in leadership development, Sarah earned a Master’s Degree from Drake University in Leadership Development and a BA from the University of Northern Iowa in Theatre Performance and Theatre Education. When she isn’t helping people build and rebuild relationships, she enjoys playing games with her husband Nick and cuddling with their fur baby, Sally.

Resources Mentioned

Sarah Noll Wilson Interview Transcript

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Well, I’m excited to hear about Don’t Feed the Elephants!: Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Relationships. But, first, we need to hear about you and your fondness for accordions.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Some people picked up baking during the pandemic, I picked up playing and collecting accordions.

Pete Mockaitis
Collecting. How many do you have?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Eight.

Pete Mockaitis
How much space does that take up in the home?

Sarah Noll Wilson
A lot because they’re not small, and they come in these big suitcases. I didn’t intend to buy eight. Three of them are actually broken, so I need to find homes because accordions are quite fragile.

Pete Mockaitis
Who would even like a broken accordion? Any takers?

Sarah Noll Wilson
There’s a market for accordion pieces. But, yeah, I had my grandpa’s accordion, and I always wanted to learn it, and then never had the opportunity. And this is actually the story, I wanted to cheer up my young neighbor whose birthday party got cancelled when everything shut down, and so I serenaded him from his front yard. The six-year-old was not into it. He was just like, “What’s my weird neighbor doing?”

And then, through a random chance on the internet, I got connected with one of the world’s best accordion players. He gave me some lessons during the pandemic, and then I got a frozen shoulder, I couldn’t play for a year and a half, and now I’m back.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. Okay. Kudos. And so, what makes the accordion special and fun when you’re playing it?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, that’s a really beautiful question. The instrument is incredibly complicated because you have three different components you’re thinking about. You have the keyboard on the one side, you have the base notes which are organized in a different order, it’s chromatic or by frets, and then you have the bellows. And so, one thing that I love about playing is somebody with ADHD, it’s really hard. And as a business owner, there’s very few tasks I can do where my brain can totally focus on one thing. And because of the complexity, it’s very much a point of self-care for me.

Also, it’s just fun and quirky, and people don’t expect you to pull out the accordion. And the other thing is it became a place where my parents and I bonded virtually, so they loved to hear me play. And so, when I play, I think about them, so there’s like an emotional component to it as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, there’s a lot to that notion associated. It has sufficient complexity to completely absorb your thoughts, and, thusly, it’s self-care. And I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying things, because I got so into this at Chess.com and cheating allegations, like, “What’s this Chess.com all about?”

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it just sucked me into this whole world. And that seemed to be a theme for a lot of people in the pandemic, was with chess, it’s like, “Oh, well, this absorbs all my thoughts and I’m not worried about all this stuff because I’m thinking about, ‘How the heck can I checkmate this guy in three moves? Is that even possible?’ Wait, let’s try this. Let’s try this.” And then the brain is completely consumed with the puzzle.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I like to think of it as a snow globe that finally gets to settle, and you just get to focus on one thing. And the problem is, as I’ve actually gotten better because I’m taking lessons from somebody who knows how to teach a beginner because my friend, who I met, was like teaching me music theory on the second session. I was like, “I just want to know what to do with these buttons.”

But, one night, I was playing, and I was playing a song, and I stopped, and I looked over at my husband and I was like, “Hey, you know, I was thinking about something with the business X, Y, Z.” He’s like, “Oops, time out. Time out. You’re not playing complicated enough music if you’re thinking about business at the same time.” And he’s like, “I just want to make that observation.” But I can see that with chess because that’s not just as simple as, “I’m making a move and now I’m waiting.” You’re looking at all the possibilities.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. All right. Well, let’s talk about your book Don’t Feed the Elephants! Tell me, did you make any particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries about conflict and avoidance when you were digging into this?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I love that question. When I started out on this path, I always lovingly say I’m a card-carrying member of the conflict avoidance club. I grew up in the Midwest, I grew up from families of conflict avoidance, and I was really interested in, “How do we have the conversation?” and there are so many great books out there about things you can say and things you can do.

And the thing that I started to notice in my journey of experimenting and trying to figure this out is that there wasn’t a lot about, “How do we name and notice the avoidance?” Because what I was seeing is that there were people who had, even when they had the tools of how to have the conversation, they were still avoiding it.

And so, that took me on this trajectory of, “How do we get really curious about the avoidance so that we can push through that and then have the conversation?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, I want to talk, absolutely, about how that’s done. Maybe we could start with a little bit of why. Is avoidance okay?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it working for us?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
How do we decode that? Like, what’s at stake here?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, sometimes it is appropriate. And we have to understand that if we’re avoiding, whether we’re conscious of it or not, it’s because we’re coming from a place of protection. We’re protecting ourselves, maybe we’re protecting others, which is still protecting ourselves. Maybe we’re protecting our power. Maybe we’re in a place of protection.

And one way I like to think of avoidance is through sort of the lens of there’s aggressive passive-aggressive avoidance where I’m stonewalling, where I’m throwing the grenade as I leave the room. And in those situations, it’s like power over the situation. I’m trying to cause a reaction and then leave. Then there’s fearful avoidance. I’m afraid to be hurt. I’m afraid I’m going to be retaliated against. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt someone’s feelings. And then what does that mean about me?

But then the third one that I like to frame it up is this conscious avoidance or disengagement. And maybe I might avoid a situation if I truly know that I’m not safe. I might avoid a situation because, I mean, we’ve all had moments where we go, “That’s just not a battle I want to pick right now.” Maybe my energy is spent somewhere else. Maybe it’s a relationship that’s not as important to me, and I go, “You know what, it’s just…”

But the difference is conscious avoidance, from my perspective, is if aggressive avoidance is power over, fearful avoidance is feeling powerless, conscious avoidance is like power from within that I’m making the choice not to engage, and I’m coming from a place of acceptance rather than fear or resignation. And so, I think that’s important because sometimes, when people are getting excited about this work or other people’s bodies of work of, “How do we have the conversation?” they’re like, “Got to have the conversation. Got to free the elephant,” and they get really aggressive about it, but sometimes it might actually be safer and better for us to not. But I wanted to come from a place of choice instead of a default.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes sense, as oppose to, “That’s just too much. I’m overwhelmed. This is scary. Avoid. Eject. Evacuate,” instead of that just being like exactly automatically where we go. That is one of several options at our disposal, and we will thoughtfully conscientiously choose what works best for us. So, now, tell us, what is at stake or what do we stand to lose if our default setting is to avoid conflict? Like, we are chronically consistently avoiding conflict, what will be the implications, consequences for us?

Sarah Noll Wilson
So much. There are implications of our connections with others won’t be as deep or as authentic. We can cause harm to relationships that we won’t realize. One of the ways I think about it is that the comfort we gain in the short term doesn’t always outweigh the damage in the long term. I’ve seen organizations where when they are a culture of “harmony” or “niceness,” a lot of problems are underneath the surface.

Actually, I just had a client recently who said, “You know, when we don’t speak it out, we always act it out.” I loved how he said that. And so, that could be relationships, high-quality, deep-trusting relationships, that can be from an organization perspective. We can be losing out on creativity and innovation and better ideas, that psychological safety, but also on a personal level if we’re avoiding.

For some people, we also could be sacrificing ourselves in the process of not setting boundaries, of not being clear about what we need, not being able to communicate that. And that can erode your relationship with yourself and your relationship with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, plenty is at stake there. Then tell us, how do we overcome that avoidance? How do we find the courage? What’s the process?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. So, the tools that we’ve put together, the framework we use, and I always say this as a disclaimer, if you will, that humans are complex, and relationships are complex, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Even if you and I have a really great relationship, maybe you’re stressed about something, like you’re in a different headspace, or you’re “hangry”, or you’re focused on something else.

So, I always say it’s all about, “How many tools can we have at the ready so that we can bring it out?” So, one of the things that I recognize in the conversations and all the work that I was doing with individuals, and even in my own experience, is that a lot of times, the reason, one of the reasons we were avoiding is because we’re thinking of the conversation as a confrontation.

And I think that, “How do we prepare people and how can we think about this situation differently so we can diffuse the heat for us?” So, what I lay out in the book, and what I firmly believe in, is that one of the ways that we can approach these conversations so that we can have more courage is through curiosity.

And the reason that curiosity is so important is a couple of things. So, one of the things I noticed as a pattern is that when people were frustrated in a situation, they often just say frustrated and didn’t really understand exactly why they were frustrated. And what we know about relationships is that if there is a conflict, if there’s a disagreement or tension, it’s usually because a value of ours is being stepped on or a need is not being met. And so, people weren’t going to that level.

The other thing that I observed is that people would rarely get curious about the other person. They’re just busy being mad at them and not considering their perspective. And then, finally, because we’re talking about multiple humans and relationship with each other, it was really hard for people to get curious about the role that they played.

And one of the things we know also about curiosity is that in order for us to be curious, that activates our higher-functioning part of our brain, which calms down that primitive amygdala brain that will get triggered when we’re feeling threatened in a situation. So, our approach is we call it the curiosity first approach.

And so, it starts with getting curious with yourself, and that could be asking questions, like, “What am I feeling? What do I need in this situation? What information do I have, don’t I have?” When we’re talking about work in particular, and we’re struggling with someone, this comes up a lot when we’re working with managers, is, “Is it a preference issue or is it a performance issue?” because sometimes we confuse the two, that, “I think you’re not performing well because you’re not doing it how I would want to do it.”

And so, it’s just taking a little bit of time to slow down to unpack, and go, “What am I actually feeling? And why am I feeling that way?” And so, here’s what it can look like in practice. I was working with somebody. This is like a classic story that I think just demonstrates it so beautifully. He was a manager, and one of his team members would interrupt anytime he’d have a conversation with someone in the area.

So, she would shout over the cubicle walls and interrupt, and it just drove him nuts, and he’s like, “I have to tell her to stop.” And I said, “Yes, you do. But, like, what is it about that? Like, what value of yours is being stepped on when she’s doing that?” And he thought about it for a moment, and he went, “I think it’s disrespectful.” And then I invited him to get curious about her, because I said, “Clearly, she doesn’t think she’s being disrespectful.” I said, “What value of hers do you think she’s honoring in this moment?” And he was like right away, “Oh, shoot, she thinks she’s being helpful.”

And so, now they can have a very different conversation around needs instead of just, “Don’t do that.” So, phase one is get curious with yourself, and then it’s get curious about the other when it makes sense. And the reason I say it like that is because we always say curiosity is an invitation, not a prescription.

For example, I’m not going to ask somebody who’s experienced harassment to get curious about their harasser. Like, that’s not going to be the ask. And then when we’re going into the conversation, “How can we approach it from being curious with them?” And there are some strategies we lay out there. So, it’s very much anchored in, “How do we get clear about what’s going on, get clear about what I’m feeling, get clear about what’s the impact I want to make on this conversation?” And then enter into it as a conversation instead of a confrontation. That’s a lot of information I just summed up for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I appreciate it. And I like it that it’s, okay, curious, curious, curious in terms of the running thread through it all. And so, that’s easy to remember as opposed to, “There’s nine key principles, Pete.” And I guess I’m wondering, even before we can get to that place of higher-order emotional, intellectual, wise, calm processing…

Sarah Noll Wilson
Thoughtful, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
If we’re just angry, it hurts. Like, is there sort of like a stop, drop, and roll, or CPR, or First Aid before we get into these wise thoughts just to be able to get a grip to be able to go there?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yes. And for us, it’s being able to notice and name in the moment when we’ve been triggered, and to build up that muscle to be like, “Oh, I am frustrated right now.” Because, you’re right, you can’t jump to that when that amygdala is triggered. We’re not getting curious. And so, for us, that’s why a lot of our work is on helping people understand our biological stress reaction so we can start to see those in the moment, so then we can name it, because I firmly believe in what I’ve observed is when we can see something and name it, then we can choose to change it.

And so, some strategies. One, when you notice you’re getting emotionally triggered is deep breathing is really effective. And I always love to explain why because we know breathing is helpful in a stressful situation, but it’s literally because our organs are massaging the vagus nerve, it’s the longest nerve in our body. And when we can massage that, that actually kicks off chemicals to calm down that sympathetic nervous system response, that fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flock response, and so deep breathing is really powerful. And what I love about breathing is it’s free. And if we’re lucky, it’s always with us.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I am a subscriber to the Breathwrk app, so I like all kinds of breathing things. Tell me, any finer points when it comes to deep breathing in terms of nose, mouth, counting, pace, diaphragm, or just any kind of deep breathing is just fine?

Sarah Noll Wilson
I think any kind of deep breathing is fine, but if you’re noticing you’re particularly emotionally triggered, for me, personally, I love the four-four-four just because it’s really simple. I’m going to breathe in for four counts, I’m going to hold it for four counts, and then I’m going to exhale for four counts. And, again, we can’t get to that higher thinking if we don’t realize that our brain has been flooded, and that can be tricky in the moment.

Because the thing, sometimes when we hear people, it’s like, “I want to be able to have these conversations and not react,” or, “I want to be able to have these conversations and not have the other person react,” and it’s really important for us to understand that that stress reaction happens so fast. Our amygdala can flood our brain in 0.07 seconds. It happens so fast. So, the goal isn’t to remove the reaction. The goal is how quickly can we notice it so then we can work to try to recover, so we can show up more intentionally.

I can go on and on about the amygdala. It’s my favorite.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Well, 0.07 seconds, whenever we have a precise number, it makes me think you know what you’re talking about, Sarah.

Sarah Noll Wilson
You want a couple others, right? Like, the chemicals will peak in 18 minutes but it actually can take up to 24 hours for cortisol, adrenaline to be metabolized, which is why I’m not a fan of, like, “We have this tough conversation. Let’s figure out the solution.” I’m like, “Nope. My brain isn’t there yet.” I’m very pro go-to-bed mad, which, like, bucks every piece of advice you get on your wedding day. But to go to bed consciously, intentionally, to say, “I’m not in the headspace right now. I need to give this some time for this to clear up. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, we talked about sort of First Aid or CPR as the deep breathing in the moment. I’m curious, any prudent self-care strategies during the 24 hours following the flooding?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I think that that looks different for different people. So, I’m a big, big believer in figure out your personal manual, if you will. So, for me, I know that going for walks and getting physically active is really helpful in helping me, like, settle that brain a bit so that I can access the higher-functioning parts of our brain.

And, again, I’m just speaking from my experience, so physical activity can really be valuable. Depending on your situation, some kind of physical touch can be really valuable and calming. And one of the things that I wanted to just, like, talk about for a moment, because I think meetings after the meetings get a bad rap. We’re all like, “Oh, we got meetings after the meetings.”

But, biologically, typically the first stress response we have is what we call a flock response. We flock to another human to be like, “Am I crazy? Did that just happen?” And sometimes that can be unproductive. If I’m just coming to you to vent and to ruminate, that can be unhealthy and unproductive. But sometimes it can be a healthy response, to say, “I need to talk to someone else about this to get perspective, to help me kind of navigate my emotion so I can get to a place on the other side.” So, if you have people with whom you can talk to, that can be really powerful, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, we talked about the self-care, and we talked about the deep breathing. And when it comes to these levels of curiosity, are there any super questions you find to be particularly effective in surfacing that positive curious mojo?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. I think, for yourself, one of the most important questions is, “What do I need in this moment?” We don’t often, and this has been my experience with the work that we get an opportunity, I feel like we get a front-row view of humans and teams, that we don’t often think about it. We’re just mad, or we’re just frustrated, or we’re just scared, or whatever the case might be. But, like, “What do I need in this moment?”

So, that, one, it takes the pointing of the fingers away from someone else, to, like, “What do I need?” So, when I think about getting curious with yourself, I think that’s a really important question. I think a hard question that is equally important is, “What role am I playing or did I play?” And there might not be an answer to it, but a lot of times we likely have contributed to a situation, and so that’s valuable.

When I think about the question that I would want to ask about someone else, and when I talk about getting curious about someone, the goal isn’t to fill in their story or to make assumptions. It’s just to remind ourselves that they have a story, that they have a perspective on this. And so, I love the question, “What makes sense to them?” because sometimes what can happen is, when we are emotionally triggered and put into that protective state, we can jump to judgment, like, “They’re an idiot. I don’t understand why they would do that.” But we all are walking around behaving in ways that make sense to ourselves.

And then when I think about getting curious with, I think, again, one of the questions that we don’t often think about, we’re just like, we ramp up for this conversation, we’re feeling the apprehension or the nerves, or maybe we’re feeling the fight, whatever it might be, is to ask yourself, “What impact do I want to make with this conversation? What’s the impact I want to make on you, on our relationship, on this moment, for me? Because maybe my impact is I want to set a boundary, which means that in order for me to do that, I need to be maybe more courageous. Maybe I want to repair so I need to be more empathetic.”

And I think that we kind of just like go into the conversation and we don’t think about, “What’s the impact I want to make?” Not that you can totally control it. You can’t. The other person gets to decide the impact, ultimately, but it can calm us down. And what I love about that question is that, at the end of the day, I can’t control you and your reaction but I can control how I’m going to show up.

And so, for me, if I’m going into a particularly heated conversation, and I’m talking about this, like, I’ll calm but, let’s be real, my heart races and I’m stressed the night before and thinking about it. But sometimes, even if the result isn’t what I hoped for, I always want to leave knowing I did my best and I showed up as intentionally as I could.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Sarah Noll Wilson
So, those would be the three questions.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. And if it’s not us but someone else who’s avoiding conflict and we really do have to have that conversation, or so it seems to us, any pro tips for engaging that person optimally?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. So, when I hear that, I think, like, a situation where, “You two clearly need to talk, like you need to stop talking to me.” But then I want to talk about how you could bring it up in a team. So, I’m a big fan of, “It sounds like you need to have a conversation with this person. What can I do to help?” And then leading them through. That’s what I love about the curiosity first approach, is you can use it for yourself or for someone else.

So, if they’re coming to you and they’re all fired up, “Yeah, like I can see you’re mad. What’s the need that you have right now that’s not being met? Yeah, I can see that. What information do you think they’re missing that might be valuable?” or whatever the case might be, but encouraging. And there are times when, and I’ve had situations, and I’m sure I’ve been guilty. I’ve been guilty of this, but there are times where maybe someone’s talking to you about a situation, and it’s the third or fourth time. And at some point, that’s when there’s, from my standpoint, a loving push of, “I can see this is still bothering you. This is the third time you’ve brought it up with me. I’m actually not the one that can change this situation.”

And so, one of the practices that I love that’s from Marshall Goldsmith’s work in his book Triggers is in any situation, we can accept it, we can adjust it, or we can avoid it, and so navigating that. If it’s a situation where I feel like I’m sensing, like, “I think we need to talk about this,” then I’ll just approach that, “Hey, can we talk about that meeting and what happened?”

I’m a big fan, especially if it’s one to one, of coming at it from a place of, “I want to hear your perspective, and I’d like to share with you mine,” because I wanted it to be an invitation for a conversation instead of just, “Hey, I want to tell you how terrible you were, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But to just say, “Hey, would you be open,” I also love that language, “Would you be open to talking about that meeting? I’d like to hear your perspective, and I want to share with you mine.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you used one of my favorite phrases when you talked about, you said you liked that language. And I would like to hear some of your favorite words and phrases in the course of these conversations that seem to be really handy, and maybe some words and phrases that are troubling and ought to be avoided.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Anything that’s always, never.

Pete Mockaitis
Always, never, should, but.

Sarah Noll Wilson
To avoid, yeah. Any you, “You do this,” and “You always do this.”

Pete Mockaitis
“You always should never…”

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, those are juicy. Some phrases that I like to have, and it depends on the situation. Okay, so let’s talk. One of my favorite phrases to use when someone is getting heated, because, again, there are times when I will fight, and there are times when I will get into a full freeze mode. I love the practice of honor the emotion but coach the behavior.

And what that looks like is, “Hey, Pete, it’s okay that you’re upset right now. What’s not okay is you keep interrupting me.” So, you honor the other person’s emotions, but you’re setting some boundaries on what’s appropriate for us to talk about. You know, I’m also just a big fan of “Tell me more.” I think that, so often, I don’t think, I know this from, like, observing conversations day in, day out, is that sometimes we think we know what the other person means, and just like double-clicking, or that’s such a corporate phrase.

But just getting curious about, “Okay, when you said transparency, what did that mean to you? Or, how would you define that? Or, what would that look like in our relationship?” Because a lot of times, you know, there’s Judith E. Glaser, she’s a researcher that built a body of work, Conversational Intelligence, and there’s a study that she referenced that it’s something like nine out of ten conversations miss the mark.

And some of that is because we think we understand each other, “Oh, yeah, you said this, and I said this, and I know what that means to me, but I don’t actually clarify what that means to you.” When I’m working on a team, I love using language of observation and then an invitation, “I want to make an observation. I feel like we’re dancing around X. What do other people think?”

“I’m on the balcony right now,” that’s language we use, “I’m on the balcony right now, and I want to make an observation that we haven’t heard from half the group, and I’m curious about what we’re missing out on because we’re not hearing those voices.” So, I love an observation because it’s not as strong as just an accusation, and it invites people into the conversation in a safe way.

Something that’s a practice that I wish I would love to see happen more. Oh, wait. I have two more. I’ve got like a whole slew of them. This actually comes from my colleague Gilmara Vila Nova-Mitchell, and it’s asking for a do-over. So, when a conversation doesn’t go well, and you know it, you just go, “Oh, I, like, stuck my foot in my mouth, and I want to repair it.” Sometimes we’ll just leave it and linger and hope it goes away, and we pretend that it didn’t happen.

But she uses the language of, “I’d like to do a do-over. And a do-over isn’t so I can reiterate my point of view into over so I can show up more intentionally.” And I think that can be really, really powerful when you’re trying to repair, because courage isn’t just when things are in conflict. We need courage when we’re trying to repair or heal a relationship. I think one of the hardest things to do is to really honestly apologize when you’ve hurt somebody. That can be really, really hard.

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I think the thing that people are so much more capable than I think we give ourselves credit to be able to hold steady. And so, what I always lovingly say is practice won’t make it easy but it might make it easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I was about to ask for a favorite quote. That might be one. You got another?

Sarah Noll Wilson
I do. I do. That’s not mine. That’s my quote. My favorite quote is from the author, Minda Harts, and she wrote the book Right Within, The Memo, and the quote is “Nobody will benefit from your caution, but many can benefit from your courage.” That is on my mind and heart every single day in my work.

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Dr. Tasha Eurich, her book Insight, I love the study on self-awareness that they did that basically showed that roughly 90% of people think they’re highly self-aware and only about 10-15% are. And I think that’s valuable for us. I like to think, instead of thinking, “I’m self-aware.” Now I think, “How might I not be?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite book?

Sarah Noll Wilson
The Waymakers by Tara Jaye Frank, and it’s clearing a path to equity with competence and confidence. I think it’s a really excellent book that offers tangible practices on how we can show up differently for those of us who are committed to pursue equity and inclusion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Sarah Noll Wilson
A tool that I like in my conversations, and this comes from the work of Conversational Intelligence, is understanding that all conversations dance in the space of transactional, positional, or transformational. And once I understood that, I could show up very differently of knowing what the moment and the relationship needed.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I know what transactional is. What’s positional and what’s transformational?

Sarah Noll Wilson
So, positional. So, if transactional is an exchange of information, telling, selling, yelling; positional is advocating and inquiring; and then transformational is sharing and discovering.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s good. And a favorite habit?

Sarah Noll Wilson
The one I’m working on building is sleep because it’s the domino that everything else falls from. So, for me, it’s doing things to have really good sleep, and playing the accordion. That’s also one of my favorite habits.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I recently became aware of Crescent Health, does sleep coaching. That exists now. Fun fact.

Sarah Noll Wilson
That’s so interesting. Love that. Can I add that to my list? It’s the linchpin of mental health for me.

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Two. “People don’t fear change, they fear loss.” And the second one is, “You don’t get to decide if you’re trustworthy. The other person does.” Those are the two that I hear the most.

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, they can come to our website SarahNollWilson.com. My name is on the site but the team is behind it. Or, if you want to connect personally, my DMs are always open, so I’m very active on Twitter and LinkedIn, and I’d love, love to hear from folks.

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

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Notice. See if you can notice and name the emotion or reaction. See if you can do the CPR we were talking about, and take a deep breath and to then make an intentional choice. So, see if you can catch the amygdala flooding, or hijack, sometime this week.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sarah, this has been a treat. Thank you. I wish you much luck with “Don’t Feed the Elephants!” and all your adventures.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Thank you.