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Oct 24
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811: How to Lead Positive Change and Grow Your Influence with Alex Budak

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Alex Budak shows you how to initiate change at any level.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why you don’t need titles to be a leader 
  2. The five influence superpowers
  3. How to build your leadership skills–one moment at a time 

 

About Alex

Alex Budak is a social entrepreneur, faculty member at Berkeley Haas, and the author of Becoming a Changemaker. At UC Berkeley, he created and teaches the transformative course, “Becoming a Changemaker,” and is a Faculty Director for Berkeley Executive Education programs.

As a social entrepreneur, Alex co‐founded StartSomeGood, and held leadership positions at Reach for Change and Change.org.  He has spoken around the world from Cambodia to Ukraine to the Arctic Circle, and received degrees from UCLA and Georgetown. 

Resources Mentioned

Alex Budak Interview Transcript

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

Alex Budak
Hey, Pete, thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting about changemaking, Becoming a Changemaker, your book and expertise. Could you kick us off with a particularly inspiring example of changemaking that you find extra touching personally?

Alex Budak
There are so many. I spend my days surrounded by inspiring changemakers but I’ll tell one story. This is Ibrahim Balde, he was a student of mine in my class at UC Berkeley. He took the class as a freshman. And one of the things I teach in my class is be the ex you wish you had, be the friend you wish you had, be the leader you wish you had, be the mentor you wish you had.

And so, at Berkeley, as a black student, he felt like there wasn’t enough community, not a lot of resources, and so on office hours, we talked about that. And so, in the class, he decided for his changemaker project, he would start a small little pilot program, just a small way to find ways to better support the black community at UC Berkeley.

Over the four years, he was at Cal. The idea grew and grew and grew. And by the time he graduated, it turned into its own standalone startup. It’s called Black Book University. And what I love about it is that we often think that changemaking has to be this big ambitious initiative, and to be clear, Ibrahim was very ambitious, but it all started with a simple idea, leading from where he was, and saying, “Hey, I think that things can be better for myself and for my community.”

He took action and he kept taking action again and again and again, until it got to the point where it’s now a scalable startup that’s gone beyond Berkeley to other universities as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting. And so, is he running that startup? Or are other folks at the helm? Or, where is that now?

Alex Budak
Yeah, he’s the co-founder but he’s got a team around him, but he continues to be involved. And I think it’s super inspiring to see the way that he’s taken the idea and scaled it.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, so then that’s one discovery right there, is that we can start small and it doesn’t have to be super dramatic, and it’s just one step at a time. It grows. It’s cool. Can you tell me any other noteworthy, counterintuitive, or surprising discoveries you’ve made about changemaking from your work and research?

Alex Budak
Well, here’s the thing, so I, of course, teach at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, but I think the way that we often teach leadership, especially at business schools, is kind of broken. We often like tell the story of the single heroic leader. So, maybe we talk about Lech Walesa scaling the wall, we talk about Steve Jobs pulling the iPhone out of his pocket, and those are important and inspiring moments of leadership to be sure, but so often we see those acts of leadership, and many of us can say, “Well, I’m not actually as outgoing as them. I’m not an extrovert. I’m not charismatic like them. Is leadership for me?”

And what my original research shows and what my experience teaching changemakers around the world shows is that each of us can be changemakers. I think we need to stop thinking of leadership as an act.

Alex Budak
So, here’s a fun one to believe that I found in my research, it’s that leaders might be scarce, but leadership is abundant. There might only be one CEO, only five vice-presidents, but all of us can practice leadership from where we are. We need to start separating acts of leadership from titles of leadership and start seeing that each of us can lead change from wherever we are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That sounds good. All right. Well, then that kind of sounds like the big idea for the book Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level. Or, is there another core thesis you want to put out there?

Alex Budak
Yes, so the red thread that drives through all, the beating heart of this book is the theme of inclusivity. In the book, I tell the stories of over 50 different changemakers, ranging from a sales associate at Walmart who fought for equal parental leave between both associates and executives. I talk about social entrepreneurs. And I tell the story of a guy who’s just really passionate about composting and wanted his whole team to start composting.

And so, I think that’s the crucial theme, is that changemaking is for all of us. And then, of course, in the subtitle, it’s this idea it’s not change-thinking; it’s changemaking. And so, that each of us can find that sense of agency to lead change from where we are.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so zooming in to the level of professionals who are looking to make some changes in their workplaces, what are some of your top tips or your do’s and don’ts for how we go about making that happen?

Alex Budak
Yes. So, your listeners might be looking at this, and going, “Cool. Changemaking. Sounds interesting but also sounds a little bit fuzzy.” And I get it. So, I set out to do the first ever longitudinal study looking at, “How do changemakers develop over time? And what are some of the key characteristics that the most effective changemakers have in common?”

And I went into it just with curiosity just to say, “Can people develop as changemakers?” and the data are conclusive. Absolutely, yes. We’ve also started to see themes. Things emerge that the best and most effective changemakers do. Now, the one that stands out above all others is this idea of being able to influence without authority.

We often think leadership is about collecting as much power as you possibly can, and then telling people what to do, but we find that the most effective changemakers are those who practice influence. But, again, I think the way that we teach influence is often not really the right way to go about it. It can often feel kind of sleazy or transactional. It’s like the reciprocity effect. Pete, I do a favor for you, then you feel pressured to do a thing for me.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m sure you’d do the same thing for me, Alex.”

Alex Budak
Exactly. And I want to think about how we can influence more sustainably and for the long term. And so, based on the research, based on my experience, coaching, mentoring, advising changemakers, I drew up what I call my five influence superpowers. These are ways of influencing that are sustainable and for the long term, ways of bringing others into your change efforts. And I’ve seen it working with changemakers, middle managers, senior managers. These are ways you can get other people excited about your change efforts. So, I’ll go through them quickly so we can get a sense of what these five influence superpowers are.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, let’s do it.

Alex Budak
The first is empathy, so being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Patty Sanchez wrote in Harvard Business Review, finding that one in two C-suite executives, when they’re leading change, they don’t take into account how people on the frontlines will appreciate that change. It’s crucial, before you lead change, that you understand, “How might others appreciate that? Are they new to the job and scared trying to make sense of how things work? Are they overwhelmed and overworked? Where are they coming from when they get this change?”

It’s not enough to just be right. How you influence makes a huge difference. I think empathy starts to unlock your ability to engage people in that change.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so then, we take into account how others are impacted, how they’re feeling it. Can you share with us a tip or two or a tactic or approach to get a better view of that?

Alex Budak
Here’s a super popular one which ties into the second of the superpowers, which is safety, making it safe for others to be part of change with you. So, I’m at UC Berkeley, that’s a big bureaucracy. And, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of people who are a bit hesitant to pursue change efforts. And so, one of the things I’ve learned is to lean into empathy, so understand where they’re coming from and get that maybe they’re a bit more risk-averse than I am.

And so, I go to them and say, “Look, I know that this is a risk you’re taking to come along with me, but here’s my promise. If this works, I promise you will get the praise. And if it doesn’t work, I promise that I will take the blame.” That’s a small way you can make it safe for others to be part of your change efforts. That’s all rooted in, first, empathizing with them and understanding where they’re coming from.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And the praise and blame, I suppose we can talk about safety. There’s a number of dimensions. So, one is the social consequences, I guess is the word, associated with how something goes down, if it’s a smashing success or a disappointment. So, there’s the social bits. And then I suppose, to the extent that there is, I don’t know, re-work or extra time, money, effort that has to be applied to fix, to undo, to re-jigger whatever you’re changing, that you’re willing to make it safe for that person by volunteering to be on the hook for all that.

Alex Budak
Yeah, that’s right. You’re finding ways to support them and getting the resources that they need. And that really ties into the third influence superpower, which is vision, which is that when you’re bringing in a lot of different people together along on your work, it’s so crucial that they feel how they’re part of the larger mission.

I like to talk about vision as painting a picture of the future that’s so compelling that people can’t help but want to be part of it with you. And so, part of your job when you try to influence folks is to find ways to help them see how this one little thing that they’re doing, which might feel so tangential, it’s actually core to the overall work the organization is doing. So, leaning into that vision, helping paint that picture, and helping people see that it’s not just busy work. That this busy work is actually leading to something much more meaningful and bigger than themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what’s the fourth?

Alex Budak
The fourth is relationships. So, this is the classic example of something that is a long-term play. You can’t just try to parachute in and build a relationship and then jump out. But if you honestly get to know people over time, you’ll unlock so much ability to influence and bring them into your change efforts. I think about a buddy of mine who was recently raising money, running a race to raise money for a rare disease that had infected a loved one.

And when he asked me to support him, I was very happy to do so. I jumped in at the chance. But if you asked me, “Alex, where would you rank this disease, and you’re ranking the most important diseases to solve?” It wouldn’t be in my top ten, not that it’s not important. Just it’s not on my radar but I was so happy to support him because of our relationship. He’s such a good guy and I wanted to be there with him.

And that’s a good example of where relationships make a big difference. Someone might not be completely sold on your change effort, but if they’ve seen that you’re a hard worker, you’re competent, that you often have great outcomes, you know who they are as a person, you care about them as an individual not just as a worker, that unlocks their ability to come along with you on your change journey.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the fifth?

Alex Budak
Fifth is passion, and here’s where authenticity matters because you can’t fake passion. I’m super passionate about helping people become better leaders and stronger changemakers. But imagine I were at Haas and teaching accounting, not that that would ever happen, but if I were trying to teach accounting, my passion just wouldn’t be there because it’s not authentic to who I am. But if you’re truly passionate about a change initiative, lean into that passion.

There’s often pressure at work that we have to sort of be buttoned-up and be very serious all the time, but if we’re truly passionate about a cause, and I find that the best and most effective changemakers often are, sometimes it comes from a personal experience or a vision that they have, but lean into that. Don’t be afraid to share with people why you care so deeply about this, why you’re willing to commit your time, your energy, your resources to investing in it, and other people will feel compelled to be part of something that excites you as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, those are great principles. I’m curious about what are some common pitfalls, traps, mistakes, things to not do as we’re trying to provide empathy, safety, vision, work or relationships and passion? What should we not be doing?

Alex Budak
Yes, and this is one of the great tensions of being a changemaker is that we have to hold these multiple polarities at once, that we’ve got to have the sense of urgency because, if you look at our world today, so many things are calling for change. But also recognize that change takes time, that change doesn’t happen overnight.

I love the words of Matthew Kelly who wrote in the book The Long View that we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, underestimate what we can do in a month, overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can do in a decade. And so, sometimes as changemakers, especially new emerging first-time changemakers, we have this great sense of urgency, which, again, is kind of a helpful instinct, but we tend to want change to happen overnight immediately, and then we tend to give up quickly when it doesn’t come, when we don’t start feeling that traction.

And so, I think it’s crucial as changemakers, when we try to influence others, that we play the long game. You might get a no the first time you try to influence someone. You might have to change direction. You might find that, “Well, hey, I thought that passion is the superpower I would use, but I tested it out and I found, well, actually, vision is really what’s inspiring people to be part of it.”

You’ve got to have a bit of that longer-term view here, I think, especially when it comes to change initiatives, and be willing to test and iterate these superpowers to find the one that works for the right person at the right time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’m curious, you have something you call the changemaker index. What is that and how do we use that to help us grow?

Alex Budak
So, the changemaker index is the research that I mentioned just at the beginning of this interview. This is the original longitudinal research looking at, “How do changemakers develop overtime?” If your listeners are curious to take it, you can actually go to ChangemakerBook.com/index and you can see for yourself what the questions are that we asked, and you can see what your greatest strength as a changemaker is. You can be part of the data, part of the research, and get some insight on what you do best as a changemaker.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I’d love it if we could just hear a couple more examples in terms of going through all five of these principles. Like, someone wanted to make a change, ideally in a professional context, and then we see, “Oh, here’s how they had some empathy. Here’s how they conveyed that things were safe, here’s the vision, etc.”

Alex Budak
So, a favorite case study I talk about in the book is Jon Chu. Jon is the director of the film “Crazy Rich Asians,” a wonderful movie on its own and also important, in many ways, because it’s the first major American motion picture in over 50 years that had an all-Asian American cast. And so, as he’s putting together this film, he said, “Okay, there’s one song that I need for this amazing emotional final scene of the film. It’s got to be the song ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay.”

Yellow, of course, is often used as an anti-Asian slur, and growing up in the Bay Area, he said that that song changed his whole perception, his whole identity on what it meant to be Asian-American, so it’s clear he had to use this song for his film. Only one problem. Coldplay was the biggest band in the world, Jon had his people reach out to their people, and he got a big fat no. So, this is the…

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s like, “It doesn’t matter what kind of licensing or royalty or whatever dollars, we’re just not interested in having our song used in this fashion.”

Alex Budak
Just got a big no. I mean, maybe they were concerned about the implications of the term yellow for a movie, or maybe they just didn’t want to share it with an unknown director at the time. Who knows? So, there Jon Chu was, and he had no authority over Coldplay, to be sure. The only thing he had was influence. And while Jon has never taken my class at Berkeley and, as far as I know, he hasn’t actually read my book, he put into practice all five of these influence superpowers to an amazing end.

So, he had no connection to Coldplay, but he figured what could he do. Well, he could write a letter to them. So, he wrote a letter and it’s the most influential letter I’ve ever seen. So, let’s take a look at how he used those influence superpowers in practice. He starts with empathy, and he started in a counterintuitive way. You could imagine, if you’re trying to convince Coldplay, you come in hot. You come with, “These are all the reasons my movie is amazing. These are all the reasons you should support me.”

He actually goes counterintuitively, he goes, “Look, I’m an artist too, and I get it that you probably get a lot of these requests each day, and you’re probably inclined to say no. I get it. As an artist, you probably are scared of attaching your art to someone else’s. I get it.” What a refreshing way to use empathy. Imagine how many people are pitching Coldplay, and going, “Here’s why I got to use this.” But Jon Chu put himself in Coldplay’s shoes. He understood they must get tens, dozens of these pitches a day, and goes, “Okay, I get where you’re coming from.”

From there, he started building a relationship. Of course, he didn’t have an existing relationship but he used the tool of vulnerability to start sharing a bit about himself. He talked about how, growing up, the song changed his life, changed his outlook, changed the way he thought about what it meant to be Asian-American, talked about the impact that their song had on him as a person. He was revealing a bit of himself, his own personality, his own experiences as a way of building that relationship with the band members.

From there, he pivots into passion. So, he talks about the impact that their song could have on an entire generation of Asian-Americans, saying that he wants all of them to have an anthem that makes them feel as beautiful as Coldplay’s words and melody made Jon feel when he needed it the most. It’s clear he’s not faking it. It’s clear he really, really means it with this song.

And he used his vision. And what I love here is that he makes it clear he’s not just trying to get any Coldplay song or just being able to say, “Hey, look, check out the soundtrack. I’ve got Coldplay on it.” No, he’s got a particular vision. He talks about that final scene in the film and how the song would be used over what he calls an empowering emotional march. He paints the picture for Coldplay so they can understand how he would be using their song, not just so it’s a Coldplay song, but in a very particular artistic fashion.

And then, finally, he ends with safety. So, at the time, of course, he’s an unknown director but he does what he can to make it safe. He mentions how the film had received some early accolades, and also how it’s based on a bestselling book. So, he sends off this letter directly to Coldplay, and less than 24 hours later, he gets the approval. He gets the okay from Coldplay, “Yes, you can use our song.”

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

Alex Budak
So, I want to put forward this idea of micro-leadership. It’s a new concept I put forward in the book. And, like we talked about, where we need to separate acts versus titles. I think it’s crucially important that we, as leaders, break leadership down into its smallest meaningful unit, which I call a leadership moment.

And so, my belief is that we have these leadership moments that appear before us dozens of times per day, little moments when we can step up and serve others in a meaningful way. It might be in a meeting, a colleague has been quiet for the most of the meeting, and you say, “Hey, we haven’t heard your voice here. No pressure, but would you like to share your perspective here?”

Or, maybe it’s having the courage to say no when everyone else on the team is saying yes. Or, maybe it’s been willing to stay late and help a new colleague clean up after their first event. These are all small little leadership moments. And my challenge to you is can you practice what I call micro-leadership? Can you seize these moments that are in front of us?

So often we wait for someone else to give us permission to say, “Okay, now you can go be a leader.” But, instead, the lens of micro-leadership is a lens of agency. It’s your ability to step up and lead from wherever you are, when these moments appear before you, to take them, to seize them, to take that opportunity and to make things better for those around you.

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

Alex Budak
So, my favorite quote and one that’s, I think, inspired me in my career, and I read it when I was eight years old and it stuck with me. So, my favorite changemaker is Jackie Robinson, and he has a quote, which is, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on others’ lives.” And that’s always really stuck with me about, “What could you be doing with your life to have a positive impact on those around you?”

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

Alex Budak
So many of them that I love, but one that I’m a huge fan of is Italian researchers looked at entrepreneurs who are in an incubator in Italy. And so, these are people with startups, people with ventures, and they only did one simple intervention. The only intervention was they took half of them and they taught them the scientific method, so hypothesis testing, and they saw what happens as a result.

Here are the findings. Those that had learned the scientific method were more likely to pivot, so more likely to change directions, make a strategic switch, and also more likely to generate more revenue. So, why is that? The way I teach it in my class at Berkeley is that when leading change, when we’re leading anything new, we tend to put so much of our own identity into it, and when something doesn’t work out, we feel like a failure. It makes us scared to take chances because we know, “If this doesn’t work out, well, that reflects really poorly on me.”

But think about a scientist. A scientist in a lab has a hypothesis. When she tries a test and it doesn’t work, she doesn’t say, “Oh, I’m a bad scientist because it didn’t work out.” No, she goes, “Okay, cool. I learned something from this, and now I’ll try another experiment, and another, and another.” And what we find is that when this is applied to entrepreneurship, or I would say changemaking, more broadly, it helps us take the sting out of failure because we just lean into our curiosity, we say, “I wonder if…” “What would happen if…?” And that allows us to be more creative, to take more risks, and to not take things so personally.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Alex Budak
Tons of books but my favorite, I think, one that I just re-read for the first time in a few years is a book called Life Entrepreneurs. It’s by Gregg Vanourek and Christopher Gergen, and it’s all about how you can use the tools of entrepreneurship not to scale a business or a nonprofit but to build a life that you want, to build a meaningful life. I find that really moving, and it’s a book that I read just as I was beginning my own changemaker journey and one I return to every few years for a bit of inspiration.

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

Alex Budak
So, I love the tool Superhuman which is an email client. Complete gamechanger. I think all of us spend more time in our email inbox than we would like, and this app truly lives up to its name. It makes me superhuman when I’m sending tons of emails. You can set reminders. You can delay emails so I’m not sending emails at midnight. Just a super, super tool and well worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Alex Budak
Walks. I’m a big believer in taking walks. My wife and I have a 22-month-old at home, and so you can imagine life is pretty crazy. But she and I both prioritize making sure that each of us get a walk at almost every night. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I listen to a favorite podcast, like this one, or sometimes I just walk without anything in my ears. And it’s an amazing way to get a little bit of physical activity, get a little bit of space, a little bit of fresh air, and a little bit of time to yourself. And so, that’s a habit that I cannot imagine doing without.

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

Alex Budak
I think the way I start my Berkeley class, the way I start my book Becoming a Changemaker is with the words, “The world has never been more ready for you.” And that’s my fundamental belief, which is that there’s never been a better time than right now to go lead a positive change. When you look at the world today, there’s all too many challenges, all too many barriers, all too many injustices. You look at the work world, there’s all too many things that need to be changed. But I believe there’s never been a better time than right now for each of us to step up and become changemakers.

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

Alex Budak
So, love to connect with you. Find me on LinkedIn, which is my main social network. Check out the book at ChangemakerBook.com, and my personal website AlexBudak.com.

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

Alex Budak
So, here’s my challenge to you. Based on the research I shared with the Italian researchers, go out and fail at something. Go try something. And even if the risks are that it probably won’t succeed, go give it a shot. Use that scientific method and put yourself out there. I think you’ll find that, like lots of my students when I give them this challenge, they’ll find that failure isn’t fatal. And sometimes, even though we’re sure we’ll get rejected, we actually get a yes. So, my challenge to you is to go practice some failure. Go put yourself out there and see what happens as a result.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Alex, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your changemaking.

Alex Budak
Thanks, Pete. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Oct 10
0

807: How to Develop Confidence, Credibility, and Advocates with Heather Hansen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Heather Hansen shares powerful advice on how to build the confidence to believe in yourself and get others to believe in you.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The simple mindset shift that builds your confidence
  2. Why you’re already more qualified than you think
  3. The master key to winning over more advocates 

About Heather

Heather Hansen helps leaders, sales teams and high powered individuals master persuasion and build credibility with diverse stakeholders. She gives leaders the tools to make the case for their ideas, their products, and their leadership. With these tools, they change other’s perspectives and help them to believe. Heather has worked with companies like Google, LVMH, SavATree, the American Medical Association and Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and has lectured at Harvard Business School, Stanford Law School, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. She’s also appeared on The Today Show, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, Fox Business and CBS.  

Heather is the author of the bestselling book The Elegant Warrior-How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself, which Publishers Weekly calls “a template to achieving personal and career goals”, and the host of The Elegant Warrior podcast, an Apple Top 100 Career podcast. Her most recent book is Advocate To Win-10 Tools to Ask for What You Want and Get It. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, sponsors!

Heather Hansen Interview Transcript

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

Heather Hansen
Pete, it’s always nice to talk to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat as well, particularly about some of your new insights with credibility that you’re teaching, but, first, we need to hear a little bit about your childhood speedreading backstory. What’s the scoop here?

Heather Hansen
I didn’t know that I was a fast reader when I was a kid. I just read how I read but they started taking me out of class all the time and bringing me to this room where I would sit by myself and it would be dark, and, on the wall, they would put up words and sentences faster and faster and faster until I told them that I couldn’t keep up with what they were putting up on the wall.

And it turned out that I was a really fast reader, and then they would give me tests on whether or not I was actually comprehending what I was reading, and I was for the most part. So, I’ve used that skill, which I didn’t realize that I had, throughout law school. It allowed me to get through the legal briefs a whole lot faster. And now I love to read and I’m really fortunate that I can read a lot of books in a year.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I’m just imagining this scene like from X-Files with the two-way mirror and people with lab coats, and saying things like, “My God, she’s off the charts.” Was it like that?

Heather Hansen
I don’t know what they were doing in the other room but I know they would give me a box of SnowCaps candy when I was done, so I was a happy camper.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, excellent. You are rewarded. So, do we know what kind of speed we’re talking here in terms of like words per minute rate?

Heather Hansen
I really don’t remember. I just remember that they were quite impressed with the speed at which I read. And I know that now I average about 200 books a year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s awesome. Wow.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, it’s great. It’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m just going to play it out a little bit. So, if you have, like, I don’t know, a 300-page business book, how much time do you spend in knocking that out?

Heather Hansen
See, it really depends because, like I just finished a book that I loved. It was called Golden. Let me think what the subtitle is.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, about silence?

Heather Hansen
It’s “The Power of Silence in a World of Noise” is the subtitle, and I loved that book but I was also underlining it and making a lot of notes in the caption. So, that book probably took me a weekend, and that I was about…I want to say it’s like 400 pages, but lots of footnotes. And then I would go to the footnotes, and sometimes I would look up what was in the footnotes, and I really loved that book. Plus, I had the authors on my podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we did, too.

Heather Hansen
And so, it was like a little bit of homework. I read a lot of fiction. I read fiction at night on my Kindle, and those I can go through pretty quickly. Sometimes I finish a book a night, depending on the book and depending on how good it is. Again, some of the books you can just rip through. Others are a little bit more time consuming.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this isn’t even our main topic, but I’m just so fascinated. We talked about speedreading twice before with guests on the matter. It seems like this is just something you did naturally as opposed to a skill or a thing that you learned. But I’m curious, do you actually, I guess they call it subvocalize, read the words inside a voice in your head or not?

Heather Hansen
I think I do. I only know how I read. I never tried to learn this. I know that some speed-readers skim, like they have a certain method of doing it. I think I read the words inside my head but I don’t really know any other way. Even back then, no one ever said, “How do you read?” They were just sort of interested in the pace at which I read, and they didn’t, I think, believe that I was really reading, and that’s why they started testing me in the first place because that comprehension piece was a big deal to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, fascinating. Well, that just sets the stage for listeners, that Heather is a super genius.

Heather Hansen
No, no.

Pete Mockaitis
And everything that you’re about to say is golden.

Heather Hansen
Not even close. Not even close. And I’ll tell you something else, so I’ve written two books and I bemoan the fact that I can’t write as well as some of the authors that I like to read. And so, we all have our strengths. Mine is reading, and, hopefully, I hope that one of my strengths is taking what I’ve read and interpreting it for audiences that don’t want to read it, or don’t feel up to reading it, in a way that they can understand. That’s one of the things that I would love to be able to say I do well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s hear about some of your interpretation summaries and insights when it comes to the topic of credibility. You’ve been doing a lot of work and research on this lately. What’s the scoop in terms of what you’re up to?

Heather Hansen
So, as we discussed in the past, my thing is I teach people how to advocate for their ideas, their businesses, themselves, whether it’s for raises, promotions, new jobs, and to, ultimately, turn the people around them into their advocates. And I do that using what I call the three Cs of an advocate but one of those Cs is credibility.

And I have found time and time again, the other two are curiosity and compassion, but if you don’t have credibility, Pete, you can’t win. I was a trial attorney for many years, in the courtroom, if the jury didn’t believe me, I could be prepared, I could be curious, I could be compassionate, I could be nice, they might like me, but if they didn’t believe me, I couldn’t win.

And for every one of your listeners, your “jury,” and I’m putting that in quotes, those people that you need to influence and persuade to get what you want, if they don’t believe you, you can’t win. So, credibility is paramount. It comes before trust. It comes before compassion. It comes before empathy. And I think that it’s something that people don’t focus on enough, and they don’t know that there are skills to help you build it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s dig into some of those skills and how it’s built. And maybe just to get our curiosity salivating, could you share a particularly surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discovery or nugget you’ve come about in your work and research here?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think that the most important thing to recognize is that you can’t prove something until you believe it. So, for example, if one of your listeners is going for a job, they have to believe that they are the best person for this job, that they have the skills and the energy and the enthusiasm and the talent and the experience to do that job before they’re going to make the perspective employer believe. And if you want more resources, if you want a raise, if you want to be on a certain team, the same is true.

In the courtroom, people have often asked me, I defended doctors when their patients sued them, and people would often ask me, “Well, what do you do if you knew the doctor made a mistake?” And the answer to that is, “I would find something I could argue and believe in.” I wouldn’t say the doctor hadn’t made a mistake because the jury would be able to tell that I didn’t believe that.

And so, for your listeners, they need to believe first, and that means that you have to advocate to yourself, decide what it is what you want to believe, and then collect the evidence so that you believe first, and then you can have the energy of that belief and bring that to the people outside of you that need to believe you and that you need to build that credibility with.

Pete Mockaitis
And it really does resonate in terms of I’m just thinking about, in my own entrepreneurial journey, selling stuff in terms of I think there are times, like, “I don’t know if I’d pay that many thousand dollars for me as a keynote speaker. I’m not so sure.” And so, thankfully, the agency did the selling so I didn’t have to be in that tricky position.

But then later, when I had really developed a training program, like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re getting some results here. You’ve got to buy this if you want your team to be effective with the money you’re spending on their salaries. You just got to.”

Heather Hansen
You just absolutely spoke to it, right? When we can’t advocate for ourselves well, we try to outsource it, and that works sometimes. But most of the time, it comes down to us at some point. And so, you saw the difference between when you were sort of maybe lacking with a little bit of belief in that credibility with yourself and when you were full in. And it’s a different energy and the results are different.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it just feels good even being able to walk away, if necessary, in terms of, it’s like, “Well, hey, they didn’t have the budget and that’s okay. Hoping they can find someone else who fits with their budget,” I gave them some names, and I’m not thinking, “Oh,” I’m not second-guessing myself, like, “Oh, maybe I should’ve…I don’t know.”

Heather Hansen
Yes, absolutely. You’re not worried that the next thing isn’t going to come along because you believe, and that belief takes a little bit of work. We can talk about the way that I coach and teach people to build that belief but it’s not like you’re just going to wake up one day and believe. It takes collecting evidence, which is what you did. You just described it perfectly.

You did some training sessions. You saw that those training sessions worked. You collected evidence. The evidence fed you energy. So, one of the formulas that I use is credibility equals E-squared, and it’s energy times evidence. You collect evidence like you did. That evidence makes you feel that energy of confidence and competence and ability. And then the energy feeds the evidence; the evidence feeds the energy.

So, it’s great when, like you, you have some pretty obvious evidence. Some of your listeners may be thinking, “Well, I don’t have any evidence. What do I do then?” And we can talk about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I’m intrigued. So, credibility equals E-squared, which is energy times evidence, and in a way they’re like feeding each other, it sounds like. You get some evidence and then you get more energy, you’re like, “Oh, yeah.” And with that energy, you might go ahead and discover some more evidence.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, you create more evidence with that energy, and you also look at things differently. So, I work with a lot of women who are returning to the workforce or switching jobs, but oftentimes returning to the workforce after having been home with kids. And so, they’ll sometimes say to me, “Well, I don’t have any evidence that I’m qualified for this job, or that my entrepreneurial journey is going to go well.”

And so, we look for evidence everywhere. So, for example, if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you manage the books for the house, well, then you’re good at managing money and you’re good with numbers, and you can manage books. If you have dealt with children, you’re probably really good at handling conflict. You’re probably really good at managing schedules. You’re probably really empathetic. And so, there’s all kinds of ways to take.

Another example is I was a waitress all through college and law school. The amount of transferrable skills that I could collect as evidence from waitressing, like I’m good with people, I keep things organized, I can think on my feet, I can be fast when I have to, I can manage difficult personalities in the kitchen. All of those things are evidence that I can do the thing that I want to do today. And it’s just looking at the things that you’ve done and playing with it a little bit to allow it to be the evidence you need to feed the energy and then collect more evidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued here, Heather, I think sometimes, when it comes to evidence, sometimes it’s a matter of the evidence is there, you just don’t see it, and you haven’t taken the time to think about it and look at it, reflect, collect, put it in one place, and go, “Oh, wow, I’ve got loads of experience and evidence.” And other times, I think you might go down that path and realize, “Oh, shoot, it really is in there.” How do we make a prudent distinction and not get sort of sucked into the mental traps as we’re playing this game?

Heather Hansen
I think that you want to find something. In my first book The Elegant Warrior I have a chapter called “Don’t fake it till you make it. Show it till you grow it.” So, there’s always something, there’s always some evidence. It might even be a scintilla of evidence but it allows you to build upon it. So, you’re right, you might have absolutely no experience as an entrepreneur. I didn’t.

In my work as a trial attorney, the cases were assigned to me. They just came in, I didn’t have to do a lot of beating the pavement, or cold-calling, or anything like that. So, when I started my business, I really didn’t have a lot of evidence that I would be a good entrepreneur but I had evidence that I knew how to talk to people, and that I was good at listening. And I knew that those skills were important skills for entrepreneurship, in large part because I read a lot of books about being an entrepreneur.

So, I was able to work with the facts to make them into evidence, which is what we do in the courtroom all the time. Sometimes you’re given really crappy cases, and you have to do what you can with what you have to make some sort of argument to the jury. So, with my clients, Pete, I will often say to my clients, “Pretend you’re the attorney arguing for the fact that you do have something that will make you good for this job. It might not be everything you need,” because we don’t want people out there, pretending they’re ready for things they’re not ready for.

But we do want them to believe in themselves enough to keep going, and that’s where this looking around and really, I tell them to play with the evidence. Look at it from all directions. And one of the main things that I teach people to do is, “How else can I see this? What is another perspective that I can see this thing?” And if you play with things enough, there’s often something there that will allow you to begin, set the foundation for building that mountain of evidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s interesting, as I am conceptualizing this, I’m thinking of almost two different skills. And one is credibility, advocacy, persuasion, and the other is prudent decision-making. Because there are times when we ought not to convince ourselves to jump into something, and there are times that we ought to but we don’t because we’re scared.

And I think I’ve heard it before, it’s like, “Oh, I should really probably get an advanced degree before I do that.” And I’m thinking, “You really don’t need that at all. That is just one clever masquerade of fear and delay that you just don’t need to deal with.” And other times, it’s like, “You know, that is probably the prudent step that needs to precede your masterplan.” And so, Heather, how do we navigate that smoothly without deceiving ourselves?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, and I think that we really need to know what are the true qualifications. And it’s a little bit different for men and women. I’m sure that one of your guests has shared that, I think it was H. Packard. There was a study that showed that when there are certain qualifications for a job, if men only had a small amount of the qualifications, they would still apply, but women thought they needed all of the qualifications in order to apply.

And so, different people lean in different directions. Some people are going to apply for things when they have absolutely no evidence. Other people won’t apply even though they have all of the evidence. We want to be realistic about it. You want to sort of step back. And this is where you need to really weigh what the actual qualifications are. You want to talk to people who have done something similar to see how set in stones those qualifications are. You want to do your research.

You just don’t jump into anything, especially in the courtroom. You want to make sure you know everything that could possibly happen. One of the things that I teach my clients is, “You want to know all of the ways in which you could lose to make you more likely to win.” So, we want to be aware of the ways that we might not meet the mark just yet, that we might have more work to do, that we might have more things to make us as qualified as we need to be. And that’s part of the weighing of the evidence as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You’ve also got a concept called belief triangles. Can you speak about this and the other super cool tools?

Heather Hansen
Yeah. So, the belief triangle, we’ve talked about one part of it, and that’s the believing in yourself or believing in you. So, if you are talking about applying for a job, the employer has to believe in you that you have the skills and the experience and the education and the training to do the thing. That’s one of the sides of the triangle.

The other side is they have to believe you, and that means that when you make a promise, you will keep it; when you set an expectation, you will meet it. And when you can’t, and there’s times when we all can’t because the thing is outside of our control, that is your opportunity to have a huge multiplication in credibility because that is your opportunity to own it, to own that you couldn’t keep your promise, to own that you couldn’t meet your expectation.

There’s research that shows that leaders who say “I don’t know” to their teams learn more from their teams, and, ultimately, have more successful teams. So, that side of the triangle is making promises, keeping them, setting expectations and meeting them. But when you can’t, owning it and being willing to do that. It’s a mix of vulnerability and authenticity, and it’s extremely powerful.

And then the third side of the triangle is the side that people often forget. And that’s that people want to believe that you can help them. So, someone might say, “Well, this person is very qualified for this position, and I trust them when they set an expectation, I think that they’ll meet it, when they make a promise, I think they’ll keep it, but I just don’t think they get me and what I need, and how I need this job to be done.”

And that is probably the most important piece because people don’t really care if they can believe you and if they can believe in you if you’re not able to help them. So, that piece is really important and part that most people skip.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as I understand it, we have credibility in the sense that they believe in you, like, “Okay, you know what you’re doing,” and they believe that you’re truthful, you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, and yet that’s still insufficient because they don’t believe you understand them. Can you give us some examples of that?

Heather Hansen
Or you have their best interest in mind. So, if we’re talking about, in DEI this happens often. Someone might believe that their employer is truthful. They might believe their employer runs a great company. But they might not believe that their employer sees them for who they are, and is going to support them and give them opportunities and help them, which is that he’ll believe you can help them.

so if I apply for a job, and I come in and I have a great resume, and I seem truthful, I’ll own that I don’t have this particular degree but I do have this thing, which is a transferrable skill, but the employer doesn’t feel as though I really understand their business and that I can bring my skills to their particular business, they don’t believe that I can help them.

It’s so important and it really comes down to one of the other Cs, which is compassion. I describe compassion as seeing things from another’s perspective, and then putting that into action. When you’re talking about believing that you can help them, you want to see things from the other person’s perspective, what they actually need out of the relationship, and to make sure that you speak to that to build that part of your credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you give us some examples of scenarios in which this plays out and what that looks, sounds, feels like in practice?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, so one example is I do a lot of work with healthcare practices, and sometimes people will go to doctors, and these doctors have great CVs and tons of experience performing this operation, so there’s belief in you. Great. And the doctor says, “You know, I think I can help you but there’s a 10% risk of this, and there’s a 2% risk of this,” and the patient believes that.

But they, ultimately, don’t believe that the doctor is kind or empathetic, or understands exactly why they want to have this surgery. Now this particular patient, say, just wants to get back to playing with their grandkids, and all the doctor wants to talk about is, “Oh, you’ll be able to ski.” That patient doesn’t feel like this doctor can help them, and so, therefore, there’s a disconnect there.

Another example is I work with a lot of women who are high up in various technology companies. And if they are talking to their employees, and their employees have all of the abilities and all of the experience to serve them on their team, and they make a promise, they say, “I’m going to be able to do this,” and they do it by this date but they don’t seem to really understand what the leader wants and where the leader wants to go in the big picture.

And there’s someone who, no matter how much the leader says, “I’m an early morning person, and I need to have this meeting in the morning,” they continuously try to push for doing things in the afternoon. They don’t see things through their boss’ perspective. There’s a loss of credibility there. So, that last piece really takes seeing things through the other person’s perspective so that you can speak to that perspective as you build that credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really powerful. And I guess what I’m thinking about right now is carpet.

Heather Hansen
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
When our first child became a toddler, we thought, “Well, we just need sort a bigger zone in which he can crawl around and fall down, and it’s okay.” So, we went to get some carpet, and as I was chatting, my wife, she’s big in the health and safety things. So, I kept talking about how, I was like, “Oh, we want something that’s really thick and cushy, and this kid can just knock himself over and we don’t even have to worry about it.”

Heather Hansen
Like a wobble meeple.

Pete Mockaitis
“And good and nontoxic.” And so, he kept interpreting my statement of nontoxic as environmentally friendly, and those are kind of different and there’s often a strong overlap. And so, I almost had to over-correct, I was like, “I don’t care if you plunder and harm Mother Earth heinously so long as my child isn’t harmed.” I do care about the environment, listeners, but I kind of had to over-correct in order for it to be… feel like I was being heard, and I felt a little silly because it’s not what I believe in my heart of hearts.

Heather Hansen
It’s a great example. That’s a great example, Pete, because if that salesperson had said to you, “I have a child,” or, “I have a niece and nephew, and I know exactly what it is that you’re talking about. I see the world from your perspective. You’re less concerned about the damage to the environment and more concerned about the damage to your child.”

“And I have been there, I understand it, and here’s the perfect carpet for you.” Now, they will have built that last piece of credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And it’s interesting when you call it credibility. It feels right in terms of these three levers. Well, Heather, let’s hear your official definition of credibility, shall we?

Heather Hansen
So, I am a huge freak about words, go back to the reading, and so I always look at “What is the root of the word? Where did the word actually come from?” So, a lot of people in business like to talk about trust, and the root of the word trust is strong. And I think trust is fabulous and it creates strength in a relationship, and trust should be strong, but strength takes time.

Credibility, on the other hand, the root of that word is to believe. And so, I believe that credibility is building belief. And that belief makes the difference, and it’s not only what it allows you to advocate successfully, but, really importantly, it’s what allows you to turn the people around you into advocates for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s excellent, and it really gets you thinking in terms of it takes a lot of hard work to develop strong competence and expertise into you’d be responsive and own your commitments and follow through greatly. And, yet, it doesn’t take that much work to convey that you’re listening, you hear people, you relate to them, and, yet, it really is often missing.

Heather Hansen
It’s missing more. It is the thing that is missing most often. So, I’ll give you another example that’s probably the best example that I just skipped over. I have the curse of knowledge on this. In the courtroom. I want the jury to believe in me, to know that I am competent, that I am going to give them the proper evidence, and the proper way, and the judge don’t yell at me, and there’s not a lot of objections and all that stuff.

So, I want them to believe in me and I want them to believe me. I will purposely make promises in my opening that I know I can keep during the course of the trial so that they can say, “I can believe her,” but believe that I can help the jury. That means, Pete, I don’t dilly-dally with my witnesses. I know they want to get home. I know, for example, sometimes I’m in the middle of a cross, and it’s lunchtime, and the judge says, “Counsel, do you want to finish?” and I look over at the jury, and they’re squirming, and I say, “No, your honor, I’d like to take my lunch break.”

I am trying to help them. And, most importantly, I also try to help them with the way that I communicate with language. So, my case, as I mentioned, were medical cases, and because I was on the defense side, I always went second. So, if the patient’s attorney got up and started talking about osteomyelitis, I would see the jury’s eyes glaze over, and I knew that he or she was losing the jury. I would talk about bone infection because I wanted them to believe that I could help them to understand the case, that I saw the case from their perspective, not mine.

Osteomyelitis is a bone infection, but they’re thinking, “I don’t understand what a word he’s saying. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know anything about this stuff.” But when I say bone infection, all of a sudden, they’re like, “I can trust this lady, and she makes me believe in myself that I can actually handle this case.” And so, that’s that believe I can help them get through this case, and actually do what they have sworn to do as jurors.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really good. And it’s so funny, because as I imagine a courtroom, I haven’t spent a lot of time in them, thankfully, myself.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, you’re lucky.

Pete Mockaitis
Not that that’s not awesome for lawyers. But if you’re not a lawyer, you don’t want to be in a courtroom very often.

Heather Hansen
No, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it’s intriguing because you’re not at liberty to bribe the jurors, that’s pretty basic. And, yet, you, providing consideration for what word will they appreciate hearing, what is their food timing they would like, like these little opportunities you have to, in a way, become a hero to them, and they’re just going to like you, and that goes a long way.

Heather Hansen
It goes such a long way. And the thing is, it is the key to advocating because I am advocating to the jury on behalf of my clients. And because the jurors have that connection with me, ideally, when they go back into the jury deliberation room, if there are some people who aren’t so much down with what I’ve been arguing, they’re advocating for me. They’re saying, “Remember how Heather showed us this piece of evidence? And remember she said this about this?” That is what turns people around you into your advocates.

When you’re able to see the world from their perspective, and they believe that you can help them, they’re much more likely, your clients, your customers, your friends, your family, they will go out and advocate for you if you’re able to get this piece right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, you got me. I have the most random associations for you, Heather.

Heather Hansen
I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, right now, there’s a scandal rocking the chess world, which just sucked me in, because it occurred at the Saint Louis Chess Club, it’s like, “My buddy Brent…” shoutout to Brent, he’s a listener, “…he showed me that facility. I’ve been in there,” in which this guy Hans Niemann was allegedly accused of cheating, although they don’t have any hard evidence, and it’s hard to even imagine how that’s done in a live chess match which everybody has wanded down.

But a group of four women just showed up, this is were the Hans girls, “And we support him.” And I just wonder, “There’s a whole another story there. Like, who are these girls? Why did they show up? How did he enthrall them? And does being awesome at chess now mean that you have…?”

Heather Hansen
You’re going to have groupies.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, it’s interesting. And it’s sort of, in my keynotes, sometimes I talk about this, when I customize it, depending on the audience, because there’s a difference between raving fans and advocates, and it’s a small difference but it’s an important one. Because it sounds like they’re raving fans, or fans, right? But do they have the tools to actually advocate for Hans?

And I know a little bit about that story. I know Elon Musk has chimed in. I sort of have been keeping an eye on that as well. But I think that it’s important because you want to not only turn the people around you into your advocates, but you want to give them the tools to advocate for you effectively. So, if those women, for example, had evidence that they were presenting as they were standing outside the chess center, and talking to the reporters, and saying, “Here’s a piece of evidence that proves he couldn’t do those things,” then they would be advocates. But if they’re simply cheering him on, they’re raving fans.

And if you own a business, you probably have some raving fans, but are they going out and encouraging people to use your services, to buy your products, to hire you? And there’s a difference there, and it’s an important difference for those of you that are in business, or even for those of you who have jobs and you want a mentor or someone to advocate for you.

You’ve got to give them the tools to do that well. You’ve got to give them the evidence. You’ve got to say, “Look at this thing I’ve done. Look at this raving review I got from one of our customers or clients. Look at the ROI that I received in this work that I did for the company.” So, there’s a minor difference there. And I’m not sure whether Hans’ girls are making that difference but I think it’s worth being aware of.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think I find that story so fascinating because, for me, not that I passionately follow professional chess, but I played a lot of chess when I was younger, and I saw the Magnus Carlsen documentary, which was fantastic. I just kind of like the guy, it’s like, “Oh, that guy seems normal, and kind of like me, and dedicated to excellence.” And I just sort of liked him. And then it was interesting how I found myself so torn and wanted to do all this research on the matter because, to credibility, I was pondering, “Well, which one do I believe and why?”

And I was having sort of trouble teasing out the factors because I was really torn because I thought, “Well, statistically speaking, given their ratings difference, there’s a 7% chance the underdog would win just normally.” But it doesn’t seem like the Magnus that I’ve come to know from the documentary to just make accusations in an unfounded way, that’s pretty unprofessional, so it was so weird. I’m just sucked into it, like it’s a reality hit TV drama. And I don’t know if you have any commentary, Heather, on who’s being believed here and why.

Heather Hansen
I think that it’s interesting. Even the way that you just phrased it, Pete, it really shows a lot of things about credibility. Oftentimes, we start with what we want to believe, and then we collect evidence to support that thing. And so, if you, having watched that documentary, if you’re a huge fan, then it sounds like you’re a little bit more likely to believe him, and maybe looking at Hans with a little bit less belief, a little bit more suspicion than you would be if you were like me, completely new to the world of chess and just read about it in Morning Brew.

And so, we often do have things that we want to believe, or that we’re used to believing, and that we have a habit of believing. And because of that, we just keep collecting evidence to support that thing. And so, part of this, and you can make it into a game, but to look at, “How could I look at this differently? And where is there evidence to support that other thing?”

Listen, ultimately, Pete, I say this to people all the time and people don’t always like it but it’s true. In my cases, every single person who testifies gets up into the witness stand, swears to tell the truth, and then tells completely different stories, and it’s up to the jury to decide what is true. And that makes truth a little bit interesting because every single one of them believes, or at least do think they believe, they swore to tell the truth, believes that they’re telling the truth. And the jury decides what is true.

Well, you get to decide what is true for you, and you can do that by weighing the evidence that you collect. But you want to be sure that you’re aware that you have biases as you collect that evidence, and try to, if not be aware of them, even go beyond that and counter them a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well said. And I think, for me, it was that there was a pretty good case to be made on both sides, thus, creating a real mystery. And then, in so doing, with the reality TV stuff joke, it’s like there is a tension and a curiosity that can suck you in. And that’s why there are so many shows about courtroom proceedings.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, because it’s all a matter of perspective, and how you see things makes a huge difference. Wayne Dyer had that quote, “Change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” But it’s really quite true. You might remember, I think it was in 2015, the white and gold dress. Was that a white and gold dress or was it a black and blues dress? Do you remember that meme on the internet? It was huge.

And people would fight about that to the death, “It’s black and blue.” “No, it’s white and gold.” And it really just depended on your perspective. Scientists, afterwards, did some research on why actually people saw it differently, and it had a lot to do with shadows and what kind of assumptions your brain and your eyes make based on your experience.

So, so many of our beliefs are based on our experience, and when we’re aware of that, we can start to think, “Is this something that I want to believe in? And if it’s not, how can I collect some evidence to counter it?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Heather, good stuff. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Heather Hansen
No, I think, listen, it’s something I could talk about forever. But, every day, you are building credibility in one way or another. And so, to be aware that you’re doing it and that you can do it effectively will make you better at it.

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

Heather Hansen
Yes. So, I was thinking about my favorite quote and I had to go with the one that’s sitting here on my desk. It is attributed to Viktor Frankl, though I don’t know that it’s clear that it’s from him. And the quote is, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I am big on this idea of choice, Pete, and so I love that quote because I think we get to always choose our response to things.

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

Heather Hansen
Yeah, my favorite study right now is out of Yale. It’s relatively recent, I’d say within the past two years. And it’s a study that shows that you can tell more about a person’s emotion from their tone of voice than their facial expressions and their body language combined. I love it for a number of reasons. I’m a little bit obsessed with tone of voice, in general. But I love it because it encourages people to do more listening. And listening is what helps you to become a stronger advocate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Heather Hansen
I think Golden, the one that I mentioned before, that is “The Power of Silence in a World of Noise,” that really had a huge impact on me. I am really focused on listening to silence and making space for quiet in my day as a result of that book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Heather Hansen
I like Insight Timer. I meditate. That’s one of the ways that I’m able to sort of create that space and able to respond rather than react. So, Insight Timer is a great app for that. And the other one that I like that a lot of people don’t know about is it’s called Marco Polo, and it’s a way to correspond with people. It’s like video text messaging, and I like it for a bunch of reasons. I use it with some of my coaching clients. We’re able to sort of go back and forth during the day and see each other’s faces and hear each other’s tone of voice as we talk about things. And I also like it because it’s a great way to talk to my parents and the people I love, and save those conversations forever.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Heather Hansen
For me, it’s getting up early. I know there’s a lot of people who are not morning people. For me, the first hour that I’m awake, when I meditate and I do my morning reading, and I enjoy my coffee before I work out and walk my dog, that hour is invaluable. And that habit started in law school, I would get up even earlier. I used to get up at 4:00 o’clock in law school because I knew that it was the time that I had before clients would start to need me. And now, it’s just my favorite thing about the day, and it’s one that I would not want to break.

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

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think that the idea that you can turn the people around you into your advocates if you’re only willing to see things from their perspective and then speak to that perspective is really exciting for people because, first of all, it makes them recognize that they can be their own best advocate. And, second of all, they recognize that they don’t have to do it alone, and they can actually get people on board to be advocating for them when they’re not even in the room.

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

Heather Hansen
So, Heather Hansen Presents is the website. Hansen is spelt with an E-N. And there you’ve got links to all of my talks, to the consulting that I do, to the coaching that I do, my books, and to my podcast.

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

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think I would challenge you today to start advocating for yourself, your ideas, your services, the people around you. Start to see how you do at asking for what you want in a way that makes people actually give it to you, and see how well you do with that. Because some people think that they’re good at it, and they’re not as good as they think they are. Others just don’t even try. So, no matter which of those groups you fall into, you will learn a little bit something if you try to do that today.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Heather, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much credibility everywhere you need it.

Heather Hansen
Thank you so much, Pete. Have a great night.

Sep 15
0

800: How to Get Better at Asking for Help with Dr. Heidi Grant

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Dr. Heidi Grant reveals the secrets to asking for and getting the help you need.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why asking for help is beneficial for everyone involved 
  2. The do’s and don’ts of asking for help
  3. The telltale sign that you need to ask for help

About Heidi

Dr. Heidi Grant is a leadership, influence and motivation expert, who is ranked among the top management thinkers globally.  Her books include 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, and Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You.  She is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and CBS Mornings, and her TED talk has been viewed more than 3 million times. 

 

 Resources Mentioned

Thank you, sponsors!

Dr. Heidi Grant Interview Transcript

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

Heidi Grant
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m really excited to dig into your wisdom, and, first, I want to hear a little bit about you and science fiction.

Heidi Grant
Oh, I’m a huge science fiction nerd. It’s my favorite thing on the planet. Science fiction and fantasy. I’m one of those people that refuses to pick sides on the whole Star Wars-Star Trek debate because they’re both amazing, so it’s like choosing between children. You just can’t do it. And, also, Lord of the Rings, I think I remember I had a boyfriend in college who gave me a birthday card that was actually written in Elvish runes. He probably lasted longer than he would have normally. That was such a cool thing.

So, yeah, big science fiction nerd, big comic book nerd as well – Marvel, DC, all of those things. Those are the things that are sort of my brain candy where I do a lot of hard thinking during the day and the night. I relax by watching people in spaceships do cool things and meet aliens. That’s very relaxing to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. That’s good. Well, it’s funny, we’re talking about your book Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You and I’m thinking about, right now, I read a book, this is my nerdiness, I read a book in college entitled Make It So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Heidi Grant
Oh, that’s amazing. That’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think Captain Picard was great at getting people to help him.

Heidi Grant
Absolutely. Jean-Luc had so much to say. Absolutely. And he was a fantastic mediator as well so he could help you to choose sides. Both kind of come together over an issue. Very wise man. I’m sure that was an excellent book, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really did enjoy it. Well, let’s talk about how one gets people to help you. Any particularly surprising and fascinating discoveries you made as you did your research here?

Heidi Grant
Yeah, I think you have to start from…and I wrote the book, this was a book I wrote because this was something I was so good at. In fact, the opposite is true. There’s a running joke amongst psychologists that all psychology is me-psychology because we, like most researchers, are either interested in things they are very good at or things they’re very bad at.

And this was one of those cases where I was interested in this topic because it was something that I, to this day, even I struggle with feeling comfortable asking other people to help me. And I couched in all these positive terms, “I’m very independent,” “I’m very self-reliant,” and that’s what we say to ourselves. When, really, what it is, it’s like, “I’m very deeply uncomfortable making myself vulnerable in that way.”

And so, I wanted to kind of understand it, and I had colleagues who, we were doing research at Columbia that we’re kind of digging into sort of the first piece of the puzzle, which is trying to understand why it is that we’re so uncomfortable with asking for help and why it is that we’re so wrong about the chances of actually getting help.

A colleague of mine did a ton of research that was really interesting, she’d bring people into the lab and she’d ask them to go out, and they would be paid to do this, they would be tasked with going and asking strangers for various forms of help, asking them if you could use their cellphone, if they would fill out a survey for you.

There was one where she had people go into the Columbia library and ask people who were in the library if they would write the word pickle on the inside of a library book, so the requests were odd, and everyone hated it. The minute when they found out what the study was about, they were just absolutely filled with dread because it’s, again, very human to be very uncomfortable with the idea of asking people for help, particularly strangers.

And she would ask them, “What are the odds you think people will help you? What percentage of people will say yes? Or, how many people will you have to ask before someone says yes?” They would go to like Penn Station or Grand Central, these are very public places, and just walk up to strangers and ask for help.

And what she found was that first of all, they were filled with dread, and then they would wildly underestimate the odds of actually getting help, that typically by a factor of, like, roughly 50%. So, people are at least twice as likely to say yes than we realize. And what was so interesting about this was that they would go out, and they would say, “Well, nobody is going to say yes to this,” and, in fact, a whole bunch of people said yes and were very helpful.

So, they would leave the lab full of dread that this was the thing they had to do, but then they would come back filled with this, like, warm glow of just how wonderful people turned out to be. Everyone had this experience of thinking, like, “Huh, human beings are a lot better than I thought they were.” And so, this was sort of one of these fundamental truths that one of the big obstacles we have to asking for help is that we tend to think we’re much more likely to get a rejection than we actually are.

And, of course, very few people, willingly walking to a situation where they think the odds of rejection are high. So, the beginning of the book is just sort of unpacking, like, actually, human beings are kind of wired to be helpful. It is our natural state. It’s one of the things all humans find most rewarding, or at least most humans who aren’t sociopaths, which is most of us.

They find most rewarding, and it is one of the strongest sources of self-esteem and wellbeing and life satisfaction to feel like you are doing things that have a positive impact on other people. So, people actually love to say yes, they love to help one another. And even though we each know this about ourselves, that we all like helping other people, somehow, when it comes to other people, we think, “Well, they don’t though and they’re going to probably reject me.”

So, part of it is it’s just kind of understanding that we’re often approaching asking for help kind of with the idea that we’re not going to get it, and that it turns out to largely not be the case.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s super helpful, and, yet, you say that, here, you’ve written the book on the subject and you still feel discomfort. So, knowing that is great, like, “Okay, cool. I have some logical, rational, sort of prefrontal cortex reassurance and reasons that it’s all good to ask for help, and people actually enjoy helping, and yet I still feel uncomfortable.” It sounds like that can take a while to master. But do you have any pro tips on how we can nudge it a little bit more there?

Heidi Grant
Sure. Get a little more. Well, I think, like anything else, practice makes perfect. And so, and certainly practice makes comfortable. Like, the more we do a thing and we realize we didn’t die, everything works out okay, the world didn’t open up and swallow us, then we get a little bit more comfortable with it.

I think it also helps to actually have, be armed with a few strategies that increase your chances of success. One of the things that I talk about in the book is, and I mean this in a very helpful way, is that if you aren’t getting the help and support that you need in your life, odds are good it’s kind of your fault. And it’s not something people want to hear.

Each of us runs around thinking that we’re not getting…very few of us, actually, I feel like, I think we’re getting the support and help that we could certainly benefit from. And a lot of times, we should have these stories in our heads about how that’s not, like, “Oh, it’s so terrible that I’m not getting the support, and other people should be giving it to me.”

So, one of the other things I talk about in the book is sort of what a potential helper needs in order to help you, and that very often we don’t give them those things so that’s why they don’t help us. So, it’s not that people get lots of help. It’s that when they don’t get it, it’s kind of because there’s something they’re not doing, or something they’re doing that’s actually kind of counterproductive.

So, in terms of the things you need to do, we can kind of start there, what you need to do in order to actually get help, your helper kind of needs four things, I talk about in the book. So, the first is to actually know that you need help. This is already, foundationally, one of the biggest problems and one of the reasons why we don’t each of us get the help, either personally or professionally, that we need. We feel like that our need for support is obvious to other people.

The psychologists call this particular bias the allusion of transparency. We feel like our thoughts and our feelings and our intentions and our needs are very obvious to other people because they’re obvious to us, “So, clearly, you must know that I need help.” Especially true, of course, or with the people that we’re around the most, so with our closest coworkers, with our partners, with our family, our closest friends. We think they know, like, “I need help and you can tell.”

In fact, there’s tons of research that shows that nothing could be farther from the truth. Even the people that know us well and are around us every day often actually just simply do not see that we are in need of help because each of us, ourselves very much included, is mostly focused on our own needs, and so we do not see everything there is to see, and it’s very easy to miss the fact that somebody actually could use your hand with something. It’s really easy to skip that.

And we don’t say anything. And we say things to ourselves, like, “Well, it should be obvious to you,” “It should go without saying that I need your help with that.” No. By the way, one of the expressions, as a person who studies communication and sort of social interaction for a living, I would tell you the most annoying phrase in the world is “It goes without saying,” because nothing goes without saying. Everything goes with saying, like everything all the time goes with saying.

So, I think the first piece is actually we have to say it. And nobody likes hearing that because we won’t want to live in a universe where our needs are obvious to other people so we don’t have to, again, make ourselves vulnerable by actually saying them out loud. But the very first step to getting help is actually asking for it, which actually solves the second problem as well, which is that even if someone happens to see that you need help, they don’t actually know that you want it.

And if you have ever tried to give help to someone who didn’t want your help, like I have teenagers and I see that they’re struggling with something, and I offer unsolicited help to them, and it does not always go well, and so, again, that need to ask for it so that people know that you need it and want it is just an unavoidable fact of the universe of support. We have to ask for help if we want it.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s really ringing true for me here is I’ve just sort of learned, like, I have a background in strategy consulting and coaching, and so I see all the time, it’s like, “Oh, you’re engaging in behaviors that are counterproductive to your stated goals.” It’s like, “But if I tell you about it, you’ll probably bite my head off, so I’m just going to hang back.”

Heidi Grant
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s like I’m just sort of made peace with it, and at first, it really bothered me, it’s like, “Oh, am I being selfish? Is this wrong?” But it’s like, “They didn’t ask.” And, actually, when people do ask, I’m delighted.

Heidi Grant
It’s the best, right?

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve had some really cool experiences with folks that I had sort of good mentoring going on with them because they asked, it’s like, “I’m so glad you asked why I rejected you in an interview. I have much to tell you.” And they said, “Oh, wow, thanks. That’s really awesome. Thanks.” And then away they went.

Heidi Grant
It’s a wonderful gift when you actually ask for help because, very often, people, like I said, they see the need, like you could use some support, but it’s a terrible situation to be into to feel like that may not be welcomed. And, in fact, people generally like it is counterproductive, in fact, to give people help they didn’t ask for, nine times out of ten.

So, it’s a very real and legitimate concern, which means we do have to get past this reluctance to ask for it. And the other couple things that it’s good to bear in mind are that people need to know. So, they need to know you need help, they need to know you want it. They need to know that they, specifically, are the person you’re asking for help from. I cannot tell you how many times I see this, like, blanket emails go out to 20 people, or like BCC, which isn’t fooling anybody. We know there’s a ton of people on that email, saying, like, “Hey, could someone help me with this?”

And there’s a phenomenon in psychology called diffusion of responsibility. It’s a reason why, on an airplane, the flight attendant will say, “Is there a doctor on board?” because if you don’t say that, then there may be doctors on board but they won’t realize like they should do something. So, it’s that idea that you have to kind of say.

I always say to people, “Don’t send an email to 20 people. Send 20 emails to one, each one to one,” because then that person realizes, “Oh, you’re talking specifically to me.” Because what happens to the 20-person email is that we all sort of sit there, and we go, “Well, somebody else probably responded already,” and then we just kind of let it float down in our inbox.

So, make sure that they know that they are themselves the person you’re asking for help. And then the last thing, again, it’s something that’s wildly overlooked when we ask in this sort of realm of support-seeking, is you want to make sure the person feels like they can give you effective help. Nobody wants to give bad help. Nobody wants to be asked to do a thing and then fail at delivering on it. The amount of, like, guilt and shame you would feel is sort of staggering.

And so, one of the things I’ve noticed that people often do, a mistake we make when we ask for help, is that we don’t kind of enable the person to actually be effective. I can’t tell you how many requests I get to just like connect, like on LinkedIn, or an email, you’ll get something, like, “Hey, we’d love to just connect,” and it’s like, “Okay, you want something.” Very few actually just want to connect. There’s something.

Pete Mockaitis
With a total stranger, you know, not such a human need but, yeah.

Heidi Grant
Right, like, we’re hoping to achieve a thing, like we’re hoping to learn something, or we’re hoping to get an introduction to something, or get access to a resource. There’s always an agenda with human beings. Like, we always have some goal. And when you don’t tell me what it is, my discomfort immediately is, “Am I going to get into this conversation with you and then, in the conversation, you’re going to ask me for help that I can’t give for whatever reason, and I’m so uncomfortable, and I do this?”

“I’m so uncomfortable with the idea that you might ask me for help that I can’t give, that I don’t do the connecting because I don’t want to be put in that position where somebody asks me for something, and it’s like I’m the wrong person.” But I do say yes when people kind of reach out to me, and they say, “Hi, I want to connect because I’d like to learn X, because I’d like to know Y, because I know that you know this person and I’m hoping you’ll make an introduction.”

Okay, now I know what you want, so now I know whether or not I can be effective in giving you the help you’re seeking, so now I have a lot more confidence. People often shy away from giving support because they think they might fail. And so, we should always be thoughtful about being very explicit in helping the person understand how they can help us so that they have confidence going into it that it’s something they’re actually going to be able to do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful stuff. Maybe you’re kinder than I am, Heidi.

Heidi Grant
Probably not.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m assuming if someone asks to connect with no context…we had a great conversation with Rene Rodriguez about stories and frames, and how we just need them. And if there’s not one provided, we just invent one, and I’m so guilty of this.

Heidi Grant
Oh, and it’s always…almost always negative.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I invent the frames, like, “You want to sell me something. It’s unclear what that is,” because I have been grateful…you know, I’ve been cold-approached on several occasions, bought the thing, and was delighted I bought the thing, was delighted I’ve had the cold approach. But I also know, statistically, hmm, less than a 1% chance, the cold approach to sell me a thing is the thing I happen to want to buy in that moment.

Heidi Grant
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I just assume, “You want to sell me a thing and that’s very likely I don’t want it. Therefore, I’m not interested in connecting.” So, I just invented that frame, may or may not be accurate, but if they told me, you’re right, something, like, “Hey, here’s a thing that I’d like your help with,” I’ve really gone into great detail talking to total stranger, “Oh, you want to start a podcast? Let me send you a huge email about how to do that.” And it’s like, “I don’t know you, and this just felt good. I thought you had a cool idea and I’d like to see it in the world, and if I could help a little bit, that feels awesome.”

Heidi Grant
It does feel awesome, and I think that is exactly the thing that a lot of times we shy away from being specific for all the wrong reasons. We sort of feel like, “Oh, well, ease the person into the request,” and it’s like, “No, no, no, you’re actually just scaring them away from even having the conversation with you.” Or, people will say, like, “Oh, it feels a little aggressive to just come out with what it is that I’m looking for,” and it’s like, “No, you’re creating clarity and certainty for people, which they really, people like. Human beings like certainty. We like to know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

And, like I said, there’s almost always an agenda, and people aren’t just looking to make new friends, generally, right? There’s something they’re seeking. And so, I think it’s a really super common mistake. I categorized this into sort of, I call this “You made it weird” things, where it’s like, “I would’ve helped you but you made it weird,” or, “I would’ve helped you but you were weirdly reticent to tell me what it was that you wanted help with, and so that was off-putting for me.” And certain kinds of rejections are quite painful, like if someone says, “Oh, I wanted to connect with you because I wanted a job on your team,” and it’s like, “But I’m not hiring, so this is going to be painful for everybody involved.”

So, it’s really, really good to be upfront and to create that clarity for people so they can be comfortable, or they can do something. If they can’t help you, maybe they can tell you. Like, I love it when people actually tell me what they’re looking for because sometimes I can’t help them but I know someone who can, and so I can kind of redirect you to the person who can actually help you, which also feels good.

So, that’s one of those “You made it weird” where it’s not kind of coming out with it what it is that you’re seeking. Another “You made it weird” that it is just absolutely tragic is when people apologize constantly when asking for help because it’s sort of ruins it. Giving help is very satisfying, innately satisfying to do things that benefit other people. But there’s a lot of research that shows that you can kind of spoil it by either kind of making people feel coerced, so making people feel like they didn’t have a choice but to help you. That’s never a good thing.

And then the other thing is by constantly apologizing because, when you think about it, people ask you for help, and they say things like, “Oh, I hate that I have to ask you for this. I feel so terrible. I’m just so embarrassed that I have to ask you for this support.” And it’s like, “How am I supposed to enjoy this now?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true, “You hate this and you’re embarrassed. This is real fun for me.”

Heidi Grant
Like, “If you hate having to ask me, if you feel terrible but I’m supposed to feel good.” So, a lot of times that’s another “You made it weird” where we were apologizing because we don’t want the person to think badly of us, but all we’re really doing is ruining it for them because they never thought badly about you in the first place.

Again, a common misconception that people will think less of you because you need support. Actually, if anything, the research suggests that people think more highly of people who are willing to ask for help and support because they feel like that’s a sign of confidence, where people are willing to be vulnerable in that way.

Like, we admire people who are authentic and vulnerable, and say, like, “Yeah, I’m not perfect. I could actually use…” or, “I have too much on my plate, and I need your support.” We admire people who do that. So, we tend to actually think more highly of them but we’re so convinced that people will think less of us that we get into this word apology game. And all of that is just based on, really, honestly, foundationally a failure of perspective-taking.

We do a very, very bad job at ima gining what the situation is like from the helper’s perspective. And if we could just pause and…but it’s weird because we are all helpers. So, if you just took a minute to say, “How would I feel being asked for this help? How would I feel about it? What would I think of this person?” then you have a pretty good gauge of what they think of you, and it’s pretty positive actually. But we just don’t do that perspective-taking and so we make it weird over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, the “You make it weird,” I’m also thinking about just that theme associated with destroying the opportunity for joy in that helping exchange. It’s like robbing them of that joy.

Heidi Grant
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m reminded when I was in Prague, we were at a bar, and I had purchased a beer, and I was ready to give, leave the change type tip to the bartender. And so, she took the coin and she extended her hand toward me, and then brought it back, almost like a fishing reel, and said, “For me to keep?” And I was like, “Well, I was planning on doing that but, now, when you did this, I don’t feel as great about doing it,” but I’m not going to say, “No, no, not for you to keep.” I was like, “Okay, sure.” Whereas, before, I would’ve felt great, like, “Well, hey, that’s yours, and you should say thank you,” and then we would’ve had a fun moment.

Heidi Grant
So, here, this is one of those things. So, there are techniques, and people will always say, like, “Are there things you can do to get people to help you?” like kind of forced compliance. And, yes, there are, frankly. There’s all kinds of tricks you can use that make people more likely to say yes, that are also more likely to make them feel coerced. They make them feel like they didn’t have a choice.

So, what happens is they will say yes in that moment, and then the other thing that happens is they will never say yes again. So, it’s interesting. In the case of the bartender, did she get the tip? Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
She did, yeah.

Heidi Grant
But she might’ve gotten another one, like, later on. Like, if you were like, “Oh, I really love this bartender, and I’m here and I’m having another drink.” So, helping and support can delightfully build on itself and be reciprocal, or it can just happen the one time, and then that person is done with you because you made them feel coerced. So, that’s another thing, that’s a really common mistake people make.

If the one time is all that matters, fine. But if you really want to have an ongoing relationship that has mutual ongoing support in it, you really do want to use the techniques that I’m talking about which are the ones that make people feel really glad that they helped you, very satisfied, very effective in giving that help that really lands when they can imagine.

This is another thing, honestly. If someone helps you, one of the most impactful things you can do is go back and tell them about the impact they had, not as a gratitude per se, although gratitude is lovely, but, again, related to that effectiveness idea, like, “The help you gave me had these results.” Because if you do that, if you go back and you help people understand the impact that their help had, that is a well that you can turn to again and again because that person will love helping you in the future because you made them feel very, very effective as a helper. You really ramped up that warm glow. And I think that’s a mistake we often make.

I was a college professor for years. I wrote tons of letters of recommendation to medical school, graduate school, law school. Probably 5% of those students actually came back to tell me whether or not they actually got into the program. And, for me, that was the moment that was very rewarding, knowing that I had helped them to actually achieve the goal. But, too often, people don’t circle back, and you’re really missing an opportunity to create an ongoing supportive relationship with someone when you don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. So, then we’ve got some great principles in mind and some key don’ts as well. I’d love it if you could give us a demonstration or share any favorite phrases so we can make this come to life with actual verbiage.

Heidi Grant
The truth is there are not really sort of magical words to use about this because it really is just about candor. It’s that sort of taking a deep breath and saying, “Okay, I’m going to just be honest. This is the help that I need. I need it from you. This specifically is the thing that I’m looking for. And this is the reason why, this is the impact it’s going to have on my life if you do this. This is the impact it’s going to have.”

And it can be as simple as coming home to your partner, and saying, “I know that I’m usually the one that handles the recycling but I would really like it if you would chip in and maybe we could take turns because that would give me one last thing to do, and that would kind of make me feel a little bit more supported at home.” Okay, great. Like, it’s very specific.

If you come home to your partner, and you say, “I’d love you to do more around the house,” don’t expect anything to happen. First of all, if you say nothing, I promise you, nothing will happen. If you say nothing and you’re just going to passively-aggressively sigh a lot, your partner is not…

Pete Mockaitis
“She should know.”

Heidi Grant
Right, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“She should know.”

Heidi Grant
Yeah, your partner is not going to pick up on that. If you do the only slightly better thing, which is, “I need your help around the house,” that’s probably not going to work either because, again, what specifically do you need? The more specific we are about exactly what it is we want the person to do, both the more effective they feel doing it and the more likely they are to actually do it because, again, it’s that allusion of transparency.

If say, “I need more help from you around the house,” and you fold some towels, you might feel like, “I have achieved what she wanted.” And it’s like, “I kind of was looking for something more than that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Mission accomplished.

Heidi Grant
Exactly, “I feel so satisfied.” So, it is that asking explicitly, being very, very clear about what it is you’re looking for. And then, by the way, when they do the thing, coming back and saying, like, “Wow, that really made a difference. I really thank you so much for making that effort. This made a huge difference in how I feel. Coming home, I feel so much more supported, etc.”

So, it’s just that simple and it’s really not complicated but we avoid it so much and we tell ourselves so many things that aren’t true. I think 90% of the obstacle is getting the myths out of the way, that people are going to say no, that they somehow intuitively know what it is we need them to do, that they know the impact they’ve had. Once you realize none of those things are true, then you really do know what to do differently.

And I will say that, to the extent that I don’t ask for help, it isn’t because I feel uncomfortable anymore. It’s more that I just sometimes forget to. You can get so used to operating as “independent” – I’m air-quoting right now. You can get so used to not asking for help that even when you’ve gotten comfortable with the idea of it, the challenge becomes breaking that habit of just doing everything on your own.

And so, I find nowadays, for me, I have very little problem asking for help, but I do find myself sometimes kind of full-speeding ahead on things and trying to do too much myself, and it’s just more that I didn’t recognize the moment where I should’ve asked for help. I should’ve stopped and said, “Hey, this is too much. I could use some help from somebody else.”

So, that’s another piece of it I’m realizing as a person who is kind of trying to change my habits about this, that it is a habit to not ask for help, and that, therefore, like any habit, it can be difficult to replace it with a better one and build that new muscle. So, that’s something that, since I’ve written the book, I’m in the process of doing, sort of rewiring my habits a little bit.

Before I am overwhelmed and exhausted, I ask for help instead of after I’m overwhelmed and exhausted, which used to be my cue to ask for help. So, being a little more proactive about that is part of what I’m currently working on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Thank you. Now, I’d love to hear about some of your favorite things. Favorite book?

Heidi Grant
Oh, a favorite book. Well, probably The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve read it a million times.

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

Heidi Grant
I’m still a Post-it person.

My desk right now is littered in Post-it notes, which I know is really old school, and I know that there’s apps that could do this for me, and also all kinds of programs, but I really love the tangible nature of a Post-it, and I really love how satisfying it is to cross things off a Post-it, and then throw it away. That’s the problem with files on a computer. You just can’t have that “I am done with you” moment, where you toss it because you’ve actually completed the task that was on the Post-it, so I do love, I love my Post-it notes very much.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. 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 Grant
Talking about growth mindset and this idea, the sort of background narrative that you have when you approach a task really changes how you approach it. So, growth mindset, basically, is saying, “The point of what I’m doing is to develop, is to improve.” And fixed mindset is really, “The point of what I’m doing is to prove myself, to prove that I’m already good at this thing.”

And how I orient myself, so when I catch myself in sort of a fixed mindset, and I’m approaching something as if the point is to prove myself, and I want to shift into growth mindset, the thing I say to myself, everybody has a thing they say, the thing I say is, “It’s not about being good. It’s about getting better.” And that’s my little mantra that I shift.

After 20 years of doing this stuff, I occasionally catch myself in the mindset I don’t want to be in, and to shift back, I say, “It’s not about being good. It’s about getting better.” And that has been one that people have repeated back to me or I see it tweeted a lot when I’m giving a talk on growth mindset, that it just sort of encapsulates.

I think one of the most powerfully things you can do for yourself motivationally is remember that in every particular moment that you’re in, it can be an opportunity to judge yourself or it can be an opportunity to develop yourself. And the more we can see what we do as opportunities to develop ourselves, the more resilient, creative, and high-performing we are.

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

Heidi Grant
Well, first, I would point them to my website, so it’s HeidiGrantPhD.com where there’s a ton of stuff, videos, articles that I’ve written and links to them. I write a lot for HBR so you can also find a lot of my blog posts there on various topics. But HeidiGrantPhD.com is a great place to start.

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

Heidi Grant
I think that idea that going to your job every day, looking for those opportunities to end up better at something than you were before, the more you can do that, and often we don’t think of our jobs that way. We think of our jobs as places where “I’m constantly proving myself.” What we don’t realize is that a lot of it is in your head.

That particular attitude, I try every day to look for ways, even in the tedious aspects of my job, that I feel like I can be better at something today than I was the day before. And the more we do that, the more it engages us, it sustains us, it makes us creative, it makes us feel effective, and it helps us to grow.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Heidi, thank you. This is great stuff. I wish you much luck and much health coming your way.

Heidi Grant
Thank you so much, Pete.

Sep 08
0

798: How to Have Difficult Conversations about Race with Kwame Christian

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Kwame Christian lays out his three-step framework for masterfully handling difficult conversations around race and other sensitive issues at work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we struggle when discussing race 
  2. How discussing race enriches workplaces
  3. A powerful three-step framework for any difficult conversation 

About Kwame

Kwame Christian is a best-selling author, business lawyer and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute (ANI). Following the viral success of his TedxDayton talk, Kwame released his best-seller Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life in 2018. He’s also a regular Contributor for Forbes and the host of the number one negotiation podcast in the world, Negotiate Anything – which currently has over 5 million downloads worldwide. Under Kwame’s leadership, ANI has coached and trained several Fortune 500 companies on applying the fundamentals of negotiation to corporate success. 

Kwame was the recipient of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2020 and the Moritz College of Law Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award 2021. He is the only person in the history of The Ohio State University to win alumni awards in consecutive years from the law school and the masters of public affairs program. That said, Kwame’s proudest achievement is his family. He’s married to Dr. Whitney Christian, and they have two lovely sons, Kai and Dominic.

Resources Mentioned

Kwame Christian Interview Transcript

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

Kwame Christian
Hey, Pete, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting with you here in this forum, although we go way back with Podcast Movement and mastermind grouping, some hijinx. So, I normally ask guests for a fun fact about them, but I want to ask you for a fun fact about us.

Kwame Christian
Yes. Everybody, I’m going to share some dirty laundry on Pete Mockaitis. So, I remember back at Podcast Movement which is the greatest podcasting conference, or perhaps the greatest conference in the world, we roomed together and, for me, Pete is like my big brother in podcasting, and so I realized that there are a lot of things that we do similarly and I realized something really interesting when we’re together.

When it comes to making decisions, Pete will put more research into that decision than I would ever contemplate in doing. So, whenever I need to make a decision or I need to buy something, first, I’ll go and see if Pete has bought that thing or made that decision, and then I just do whatever he did. That’s my decision-making process because he will research things to a point that I would never consider researching, and I said, “You know what, if it’s good enough for Pete Mockaitis, it’s good enough for Kwame Christian.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I’m honored by that. It’s funny, as we’re talking, I believe we’re using the same chair and same microphone right now.

Kwame Christian
Yup, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m flattered and honored, and I do over-research things and I think you might even call it a hobby at this point. It’s just fun for me as opposed to stressful. So, all right. Well, you’ve done a boatload of research. How’s that for segue? You did a boatload of research in your book How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond.

And, boy, you’ve been having some really powerful conversations that have been getting a lot of traction here on LinkedIn and elsewhere. So, could you tell us, as you’ve lived this experience recently, engaging more folks about this stuff, any interesting themes or discoveries or surprises been popping up for you?

Kwame Christian
Yeah, Pete, I think that’s one of the most interesting things because, as you know, I do the negotiation and conflict resolution type of work with the American Negotiation Institute, and for me this is just an offshoot of that because we need to understand each other in order to connect on a deeper level. And when I think about difficult conversations about race and other sensitive topics, these are some of the most difficult conversations and negotiations out there. So, I want to create that resource.

And so, one of the things that’s so fascinating to me about this is that people all around the country and all around the world are struggling with this conversation for different reasons that have very core similarities. So, for example, in different countries, you’ll have different race-related issues, but at the core, we have two things that come to mind which trigger high levels of emotionality.

So, first, we have issues of identity, who I am as a person, and what somebody like me is supposed to do in this situation or what I perceive is supposed to do in this situation. And then the other one is morality, what it means to be a good or bad person, what is the right or wrong thing to do. And whenever we have conversations that touch on those two issues, that’s what triggers deeper levels of emotionality.

So, no matter where you are in the world, these conversations come up and they are typified by high levels of emotionality. And so, for me, as a former mediator and a lawyer and somebody who has a background in civil rights, it was really fascinating to take those negotiation and conflict resolution skills that are really familiar to me and bring it to this new space so we can have conversations on the sensitive topic that are constructive not destructive.

Pete Mockaitis
And those are two powerful principles right there – identity and morality. When you start to venture into that territory, yeah, it’s getting really personal. Identity is like who I am, and morality, “Am I good and behaving well and properly? Or am I doing evil?” It doesn’t get much more potentially heated than that when you’ve got those dynamics in play.

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And, Pete, when you think about it, we all want to feel included, we all want to feel as though we belong. And whenever conversations like this go awry, you feel excluded for a core reason. Like, I can’t change my race, and so the rejection feels a lot more personal. And then I look at the document that you sent and I understand the demographics of your audience, and I was really glad to see that none of the people in your audience are people who get up in the morning, and say, “I’m excited to be evil today.”

Pete Mockaitis
We didn’t ask that question in the survey but maybe for the next one, just to be sure.

Kwame Christian
Listen, that was something that was coming through the data, and so I saw that. And so, that’s the thing, when we have these conversations, that issue of morality is triggered because you want to immediately defend yourself, “I am a good person.” And then that level of defensiveness comes up and it just leads to even more emotionality. So, that helps us to understand why these conversations are just so tough.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so your book is called How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race and so we’re going to dig into some of the how. But, first, I want to talk a little bit about the why because some folks might just put this category into the no-no zone right next to, “Hey, I don’t talk, especially at work, about money or sex or religion or politics. Let’s just go ahead and put race in there, too, because it feels too risky.”

So, can you comment a little bit on why to have those conversations and maybe when and where, sort of like the contextual landscape that makes this a great idea in time versus a, “Ooh, maybe a slightly different context would be a better time”?

Kwame Christian
Yeah, great question. And so, here’s the thing, you’d love this. I’ll give you a bit of a behind-the-scenes negotiation with my publisher.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Kwame Christian
In chapter one, I talk about why we should have these conversations. And chapter one was the only chapter in the book that I did not want to write. That was a specific request from my publisher. So, for me, as a practitioner, I wanted to essentially write the book like this, “Hi, I’m Kwame. Here are some tools and tactics and strategies,” and jump straight into it.

I want to go to where I feel comfortable but my publishers are saying, “Listen, we’re missing an important element. We need to discuss why it’s so important to have these conversations.” And, for me, and I think rooted in my own perception, it seemed obvious to me why we should have these conversations, but even though it seemed obvious, it was hard for me to articulate. And so, it took me a really long time to even begin writing that chapter, Pete, because I didn’t know what the answer was. I didn’t know what the words were. I had a feeling but I didn’t know how to articulate it.

And then I figured it out. It comes down to just one word, and it is the word care. We have these conversations because we care. We care about our colleagues. We care about society. We care about progress. We care about inclusion. We care about respect. That’s why we have these difficult conversations about race because we care at a deep level.

And now, when it comes to when we have these conversations, I’ll answer it in an unsatisfying way initially, like a typical lawyer – it depends. We need to have these conversations when it’s appropriate, when it’s a salient issue. And so, when I think about my legal background, one of the things that is critical for young lawyers to learn is how to issue-spot. What are the issues that are relevant in our problem-solving endeavor? And so, we need to figure out what’s relevant and what is irrelevant. So, let’s use something that’s a little bit more understood or appreciated or respected within the workplace.

So, within a workplace where we’re running a business, we understand that money is an issue. We have budgets, we have payroll, those types of things. And so, as people in the business world are making decisions, money is going to be an issue. It’s not always going to be an issue but it’s often going to be an issue, and sometimes it’s not the whole issue but it’s a partial issue. And sometimes, when it comes to race, race is often not the whole issue but race is a part of the issue.

Kwame Christian
And just like money, sometimes race is going to be an issue. It might not always be the whole issue, the conversation might not be completely about race, but it might be partially about race. And then, Pete, there are going to be some times where to one party in the conversation, race is an issue, and to another party in the conversation, race is not an issue. And then this becomes a difficult conversation about race because we have to talk about race in order to determine whether or not it is a relevant issue in this conversation.

And so, I think one of the things that happens in the business world is that race becomes a factor and people don’t see it coming, and it becomes a surprise. And if we’re not looking for it, we might not find it. And because of our lived experiences, we might not look for it, but somebody who’s a person of color, where that is a very salient part of their identity, it might be easier for them to see it because they are more primed to see it.

But, regardless, I think it’s important to have those conversations in order to make sure that everybody feels respected, and in order to make sure that we’re addressing the issues within the workplace to make sure that people feel respected and feel they are included and, again, just to solve problems and move the company forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, people feel respected, included – that’s huge. And I’m thinking about research associated with psychological safety and creativity and innovation, and so it’s not all about money. But, while we’re talking about the why, can you share with us some of the research or numbers or connection there is associated with organizations that are able to handle these sorts of conversations and diversity, equity, inclusion stuff well, and results, be they financially or retention or whatever numbers we got?

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. So, McKinsey did a study, I believe, in 2019, where they showed that companies that have greater levels of diversity are able to produce more revenue as it relates to research and development. And there are a number of studies that talk about how companies that foster strong levels of inclusion and belonging have higher retention rates for people of color and other diverse classes of citizens too.

And I think one element that’s often missing in those studies is the fact that this only works if there’s a high level of cultural intelligence associated with the company. And so, think about this, if you have a really diverse organization, and then the people in the organization aren’t trained on how to connect with each other, they don’t understand each other, then you’re going to have retention issues and you’re going to have poor performance. You might as well have a monolithic organization at that point because it would actually be more effective if we don’t invest in, like, the skills that are required to avail ourselves to the true benefits of diversity.

And I think that’s where a lot of organizations fail because they say, “All right. Hey, we have diversity issues, and I see the studies. Diversity is good. Cool. Let me put some brown people in my company,” and then they think that’s going to solve the problem. But if we still have challenges with the culture and inclusion and belonging, it’s going to be a struggle.

Pete Mockaitis
I had a podcast guest who mentioned that it seems like some organizations, his words, felt like they were going for the clipart in terms of they want the stock photos to look awesome but he sort of shocked them when he said, “Okay, you guys have the clipart in terms of everybody being represented but there’s actually not a lick of diversity in this room because every time we came up to an issue where we had a difference of opinion, you said, ‘Oh, let’s table it. Let’s take it offline. Let’s cover that later,’ and we’re never actually able to engage and hear these great diverse perspectives that you’ve all got to hear them hashed out, and then be able to mine the goodness that can come from it.”

Kwame Christian
Exactly. Exactly. And that’s when it becomes performative too, so we have to really embrace these conversations, and not just embrace the conversations, but embrace the diverse perspectives. And I think, again, this is clearly very well related to race and gender, ethnicity, those types of things, but I think, in general, in the business world too, we have to do a better job of managing these difficult conversations because if we don’t, then we’re not able to truly connect and learn from each other and make better decisions, too.

And, for me, as a lawyer and negotiation expert, like I said, I look at everything through the lens of negotiation. And I define a negotiation as any time you’re having a conversation, and somebody in the conversation wants something. And so, that’s why I think it’s really helpful to look at these conversations through that lens because if we do, now we can really elevate the dialogue.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so I think we’ve built out the why. Let’s do it. Let’s talk about the how. Can you give us a feel for your overall approach or framework?

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And do you hear the excitement, Pete? Now, we’re getting to where I love to be. And so, when I think about difficult conversations, in general, this is the overarching type of approach. With the American Negotiation Institute, we focus on Defuse, connect, persuade. Defuse, connect, persuade. So, first, in any conversation, there’s probably going to be an emotional element so we need to defuse that emotional challenge so we can have a more productive conversation.

Then we need to invest some time in connecting with the other person, building trust, building rapport, empathizing, those types of things. And then, last step is persuading. And if you handled the first two steps, diffusing the emotionality and connecting with the other person, sometimes persuasion happens organically by the increased level of mutual understanding, but sometimes it doesn’t. But even if it doesn’t, we make persuasion last because we want to avoid unnecessary barriers to success in these conversations. So, I think it’s important to sequence things effectively.

And when it comes to the actual process of how to defuse these conversations, we have the compassionate curiosity framework. And so, it is a three-step framework that’s designed to make your difficult conversations a little bit easier, and it’s all about emotional intelligence, managing those emotions and creating that connection.

So, step number one is, acknowledge and validate emotions. Step number two is get curious with compassion. And step number three is joint problem-solving. And it’s a flexible framework that allows you to know what to say and when to say it for maximum impact because sometimes emotions might not be an issue. Okay, then we’re going to go to number two, getting curious with compassion. I’m going to ask open-ended questions with a compassionate tone.

Then, after I gather that information, I transition to joint problem-solving. But then, during joint problem-solving, the other person might have an emotional response. Okay, I know exactly what to do. I’m going to acknowledge and validate the emotions. So, it’s a flexible approach to help you know what to do and what to say at what time.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you said validate emotions, I love that stuff. I’m thinking about Michael Sorensen we had on the podcast. I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships is his book, and I love it, and my wife is glad I read it. Can you tell us what validating emotions sounds like in practice?

Kwame Christian
Yes. Oh, and I’m glad you said sounds like. So, I like to keep it simple, Pete. I’m a simple man. I don’t want to overcomplicate things here because the reality is that during these difficult conversations, we’re probably going to be emotional too. And so, if I give you a 13-step program to apply during this conversation, you’re not going to be able to use it because you’re under emotional distress.

So, again, what I want to do is I’ll say, “It sounds like…” “It seems like…” or if it’s a really obvious emotional response, “I can tell that…” So, “It sounds like this was a really hurtful situation for you,” or, “It seems like this had a significant impact on you,” or, “I can tell that you really care about this,” and so I’m going to label that emotion and it’s going to help them to calm down, they’ll decompress, they’ll share.

And it’s important to understand that, at this point, when somebody’s emoting in some kind of way, this is not the time for us to try to force our beliefs on them. This is not the time to let them know that you’re right and they’re wrong because we have to understand that there’s a difference between facts and feelings, but in the moment, it might feel the same to the person.

And so, if we start contending with the facts at this time, their emotionality won’t allow them to fully appreciate what you’re trying to say.

So, in these conversations, sometimes we have to make a strategic choice between being right and being persuasive, the difference between being right and being persuasive.

So, they might be factually incorrect, and I might want to correct them because I have the appropriate fact for that situation, but that might not be the most persuasive choice to make in that conversation. And so, sticking to that framework helps us to be a little bit more disciplined during the conversation and steer the conversation in a more productive direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, when we label an emotion, I think this was a hang-up for me but I don’t think it actually matters. We don’t actually have to name the emotion perfectly in order for people to appreciate the attempted validation, I’ve learned. So, I’m just going to be a little whacky, like, “Well, it sounds like you were really enraged.” Like, “No, I mean, I was just kind of frustrated.” Even if you’re sort of way off, like enraged is much more intense than frustrated, people still seem to appreciate the attempt to understand where they’re coming from emotionally.

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And that’s the thing, Pete, because people don’t like being mislabeled, and so they will correct you, thus labeling themselves. So, I’ll give a couple of examples, I’ll give a pretty benign example and then I’ll give a more dramatic example. So, I remember one time, I was in a negotiation when I was practicing law, and the person was really frustrated, it was two CEOs whose relationship devolved into sending aggressive emails to each other. It was really bad.

And so, I heard the person’s complaint, and I said, “Well, hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you were pretty offended by what was in the email.” And he stopped and he looked up, and he’s like, “Nah, I wasn’t offended but I was more taken aback.” “Oh, okay, I wasn’t going to shoot my shot at taken aback. Never would’ve thought that one.” But he started to calm down once he labeled it himself and he started to explain.

And then there was another time, I like to use frustrated because it’s a safe guess. And I remember in a mediation one time, there was a woman who was very stoic. It was a really tough situation for her. Everybody knew it wasn’t her fault but she was still stuck with the legal liability, so it was just a really tough situation but she wasn’t giving me the information I needed to try to solve her problems.

And so, I said, “You know what, this is probably an emotional response. She’s stonewalling me. Let me try to break down those barriers by acknowledging and validating the emotion.” So, I said, “Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like this situation was pretty frustrating for you.” And then she got quiet, and then she glared at me, and she said, “Oh, no, no, Kwame, I am not frustrated. I’m angry. And I’m angry for this reason, for that reason, and this reason.”

And I said, “Listen, I apologize. It makes sense that you’re angry. Can you tell me a bit more about what’s making you angry?” And then she went on, she decompressed, she gave me a lot more information, and I was able to use that information productively for the rest of the conversation.

And I think one of the things that’s really challenging about this is that when you’re in the face of high-level emotions, like very volatile or strong emotions, it’s scary, and we think we’re doing something wrong and we want to step back, but, really, what we have to do is we have to have the confidence in our skills and confidence in the framework to sit in that emotionality and trust that we have the skills to navigate through it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, we talked about defuse and compassionate curiosity. Can we hear about connect?

Kwame Christian
Yeah. And so, this is all about creating connection with the other side. We want to try to create a trusting connection. And one of the things that we need to understand is, “What are those things that destroy connection?” And so, one of the things I talk about in the book is the shame-based strategies. And so, when you think about Brene Brown and vulnerability, she has a lock on the vulnerability market. I have no intention of trying to encroach on her territory, Pete.

But one of the things that she talks about is shame and the impact of shame. It causes people to pull away. They recoil from the interaction. They say, “Listen, I try to be vulnerable and I was attacked. I don’t feel safe. I’m not going to engage.” And, remember, this is a free country. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to but I can’t have a difficult conversation or a conversation of any sort if the other person is unwilling to engage.

And so, one of the things that we do that breaks connection is use shame-based strategy that vilify people for their beliefs or what they think. And so, my response always has to be using this framework, being curious to get a better understanding of where they’re coming from. And so, one of the things I like to do is try to not vilify other people if we disagree, but use it as an opportunity. I always say conflict is an opportunity. So, what’s the opportunity? We can learn from each other.

So, if somebody says something that I disagree with, or they believe something that I disagree with, I’ll say, “Oh, that’s really interesting. Now, I’m curious. I want to learn more.” And so, I want to give them the space to share, and then after they’ve shared, they’re more likely to reciprocate, and then that gives me an opportunity to share my knowledge with them or my perspective with them.

And so, I think connection really comes from that empathy, being willing to take the time to understand how the other person is seeing the situation, understanding how they feel about the situation, and understanding how they think about the situation, and not judging them for those beliefs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, tell me, are there any nonverbal indicators that we might be judging, that we should watch out for, or check ourselves out on the video camera?

Kwame Christian
Yes, eyerolls are not helpful, Pete. Keep your eyes locked in. No, I think, really, it is very important to realize those nonverbals, and I think it’s just a good exercise to pay attention to how your body responds under certain circumstances.

And so, we all have our little tells that we have from time to time. And when the conversation gets tough for me, one of the things that I like to do to kind of get a little bit more control of my responses so those tells don’t come through is take some notes. It’s one of the easiest things you can do.

Your vision is now fixed. Your hands are now focused. It controls a little bit more of your body. So, whenever I start to feel a response that might indicate some negative emotionality toward the person. I’d use that as an opportunity to take a few notes and it doesn’t come off as negative. So, that’s a really great question. Paying attention to those nonverbals, your own, that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, let’s talk about persuade.

Kwame Christian
Yes. And so, this is where everybody wants to jump to. They want to start the conversation at persuade, and that is often problematic because, again, we are inviting resistance because the way that I see it, Pete, I feel like we have to earn the right to be able to disagree, and here’s what I mean. A lot of times early in the conversation, we are so quick to tell somebody that they’re wrong but it’s inappropriate because we don’t even have a full understanding of where they’re coming from.

Now, they might be wrong, they might be very wrong but I want to make sure that I have a holistic understanding of where they’re coming from before I try to change their perspective. And people are going to be resistant to your attempts to change their perspective if they don’t believe that you have a full understanding of their perspective because they’re going to say to themselves, “How can you say I’m wrong? You don’t even know what I believe. You haven’t heard me.”

And so, it’s important to sequence it this way and have persuasion as the last step. And I talk about the parable of the blind man and the elephant in the book, and it goes like this. There’s an elephant in the room – ha, ha, elephant in the room – and they have five blind men, and they say, “Hey, I want you to feel this elephant, and I want you to describe the elephant.”

And so, one man touches the tusk, and says, “An elephant is like a spear.” Another man touches the leg, and says, “The elephant must be like a big strong column.” Another person touches the elephant’s ear, and says, “The elephant is like a thin fan,” and then they start to argue who’s right, who’s wrong. Well, they’re all right and all wrong at the same time. And a lot of times when we have disagreements, it’s not necessarily that somebody is completely right or completely wrong. It’s that we’re looking at very different parts of the elephant.

And so, I think one of the best ways and most subtle ways to persuade is to help people to see the rest of the elephant. I want to take time to give them the space to describe what it is that they’re feeling, “What is it that they feel? What is it that they think? What do they believe? And where does that come from?” and be genuinely curious about that, not judgmental. And then I want to say, “Okay, now I can understand where you’re coming from. Let me share what I’m seeing. Let me share the piece of the elephant that I’m seeing that you might not see,” and then I share.

And so, we’re really helping each other learn and grow through the interaction. And a lot of times, that might be enough to persuade but, regardless, I think that’s an important first step.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, let’s jump into some particulars when it comes to race. As I’ve listened to your stuff, a few things I found super useful, and one of them is you discussed that there are actually two totally different operational definitions or camps or schools of thought when it comes to the very definition of the word racism or racist, and it makes all the difference in terms of understanding where people are coming from. Can you unpack that for us?

Kwame Christian
Yeah. And, again, definitions are so important. I have a whole section in the book called semantic arguments, how people will get stuck on different terms and what they mean. And so, it’s not so much what the dictionary says a term means. It’s more so what the person understands it to mean in that particular interaction.

And one thing that I’ve realized is that the term racism is something that’s thrown around a lot, and a lot of times it’s accurate. And when I think about these conversations, I want to approach these conversations in the most persuasive way possible, and I want to always focus on my goal. What is the goal that I want to achieve and how best should I go about trying to achieve that?

And so, one of the things that we’re going to run into a lot of times in these difficult conversations about race is that people are going to be very defensive if they feel as though they’re being accused of something so terrible as racism because sometimes people say racism is acting with malicious intent. And sometimes, other people say racism is anything that leads to a negative impact that hurts people of color more so than whites, something like that, right?

And, really, what definition matters the most, the definition that the person is using in their mind in the conversation. And so, for me, I very rarely come to the point in a conversation where I accuse the person in front of me or the situation as being racist because I know what’s going to come next, Pete. I know exactly what’s going to come next, “No, I’m not racist,” “No, they’re not racist,” “No, this is not racist.” Now we’re having a semantic argument about what racist, what it means to be racist. I find that to be, a lot of times, unproductive in this conversation.

We might not agree that what it means to be racist, but if I stay very objective on the facts, we might be able to agree on the fact that the behavior, though well-intentioned, had a negative impact to a specific race or group. People could say, “Yes, I do agree with that,” and now we can move forward with solving the problem.

And so, I think just having a very specific and targeted approach with our language can help us to avoid a lot of these unproductive conversations where we get stuck, where somebody is being accused or feeling as though they’re being accused, and then the other person trying to accuse.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so powerful because I think folks can just wildly misunderstand each other right there in terms of if folks say, “The SAT is racist.” If you have a different version of what that word means, you’re like, “Like, that sounds insane. What are you…? A standardized test is not a human being with emotions. What are you even saying?” So, that just will not connect.

And if you’re operating from the other sort of definition, in which malicious intent is not all necessary, to call someone racist is, in a way, not that severe – tell me if this feels accurate to you – not that severe of a charge in terms of it’s like, “Are you a sinner? Are you a person who makes mistakes? Yes, and yes?” It’s like, “Do you have somewhere in your brain a series of associations that lead you to have a touch of a bias on certain issues about certain groups?” I imagine that we all do even if they’re innocuous, like, “Lithuanian love their ice cubes.”

I’m Lithuanian. My buddy, Connor, always quotes that “Malcolm in the Middle” although I actually do have a portable ice cube machine that I got here for the office because my refrigerator is…it’s not that important but…So, would that be fair to say that if we’re using the broader definition of racist, then everybody is one? Is that fair?

Kwame Christian
One hundred percent. And so, I’ll refer to one of the most popular books out there in the field, and it’s How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi. And one of the things that he talks about is his definition of racist is pretty ubiquitous. And he says, like, “There was a time where I was racist and there are times where I act in a racist way.” He owns it, and he says and he defines racist as, like I said before, anything that could have a potential negative racist impact.

And I know listeners who are big fans of Kendi, they will say, “That is not precisely what he said,” and I am not citing him precisely. So, I want to be very, very clear on that. But I think the core of what he says is that the term racist for him is merely descriptive. I know I have that part right. He says it’s merely descriptive. It’s not a value judgment. It is just a simple observation.

And now let’s accept that as true. That doesn’t mean that it will not have a predictable emotional response in the minds of the other person, and that’s one of the things that we have to recognize. Emotions don’t play by our rules. And so, whether or not we believe that somebody is entitled to feel the way that they feel, does not change the way that they feel the way that they feel.

And the way that they feel will have an impact on the conversations that we’d try to have with them, so we have to wrestle with the reality of their emotional response. And, for me, as a negotiation expert, as a strategist, I want to be very intentional about the way I navigate through these conversations to avoid that rejection, that reflexive rejection that comes with these types of accusations because there are very few people in the world who would say, “You know what, you called me racist, you’re right. I’m racist,” because that will come with significant social consequences in today’s society.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Although, if we clearly precisely defined the terms, I can imagine a group of heads nodding in a seminar, like, “Okay, yeah, fair enough. I guess, in a way, we are all somewhat, in some regards, racist. Okay.” So, in a way, it defangs it.

Pete Mockaitis
Before you till all that mental soil, such that everyone is ready to understand what we mean by those specific definitions, then, yeah, you’re going to get a strong response to that. I also loved what you had to say, is that sometimes that we should avoid unnecessary barriers, and sometimes semantics do just that.

So, if you use the term white allergies, white fragility, white privilege, systemic racism, there is a subset of the population that will hear those and just, like, shut down or they won’t take kindly to those terms because they have some association and baggage associated with it. Yet, when you explain, what you really mean by those things, they’d say, “Okay, yeah, I understand. That’s a thing that happens. Sure.”

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And, Pete, in the book, I break that down to I have actual sample conversations. So, we actually talk about the tools or the tactics or the strategies, and then we have sample conversations. And we have sample conversations on each of those terms that you just addressed. And let me tell you a story.

So, I was in Brazil earlier this year, and I started texting some of my Brazilian friends, and I started to get some weird texts because a lot of them kept on sending me the text that said, “KKK.” I said, “Why are you sending me that because, to me, growing up in America, KKK means the Ku Klux Klan, which is one of the most horrendous terrorist organizations in American history, race related? Very racist.” But people kept on sending it to me, so I started Googling what is happening here. And so, for them, KKK is the equivalent of LOL, so it’s the laughing sound, like “KKK.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I get it. “K, K, K.”

Kwame Christian
Yeah, exactly. So, when they’re laughing, they say, “KKK.” Now, I understand that. I definitely understand that but that does not change the fact that it will, essentially, always have a little bit of an abrasive response for me because that is not how I’ve known the word. For the last over three decades, it has been associated with something very bad. I can’t just instantly say, “Oh, now this is playful laughing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now it’s just humorous.

Kwame Christian
Yeah, I can’t do that. Same thing with these words. There’s always going to be some baggage associated with these words, so that’s why it’s important for me to recognize whether or not there is resistance associated with specific terms. And if there’s specific terms where there’s resistance, then I’m going to use the definition rather than the term.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the way I was trying to remember this tip from you, I’m making mnemonics for myself of other people’s material. It’s like, “Oh, so, if semantics are creating an unnecessary barrier, S, U, B, I can substitute it with a definition.” That’s how I remembered your tip.

Kwame Christian
Wow, second edition.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m going to use that but your stuff is probably way better than mine already, so it’s like, “Thanks, Pete. That was lame. I got way better stuff.”

Kwame Christian
No, that’s going in the second edition. I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m flattered. Okay. Well, I loved what you had to say about focus on the goal and how to best achieve that, and maybe you do need to substitute some semantics that are creating unnecessary barriers. And I’m thinking about two stories in which I think, so some groups were trying to have some conversations about race, and I’m pretty sure they failed to meet their desired goals based on how they’re being received.

And I’m going to throw some scenarios at you, and you don’t know what went down. But I’m going to ask for you to do your best to speculate as, “When I see that kind of thing, it’s usually because they failed to do this, or they should’ve done that, most likely.” So, here we go.

Scenario one. A buddy of mine said he was at church and they were having a series of dialogues about some race issues to learn how to do better on these matters, pick up some skills, hear about perspectives. And then there was a white girl in her 20s who was chatting with my buddy, and she said, “Boy, after hearing all this stuff, I guess I just realized how bad and racist I am, and how I just totally don’t understand what people from the other side are saying, and I really have no right to discuss it. So, I guess I have nothing to offer and I should just keep my mouth shut.” And she proceeded to not come to any of the other meetings.

And so, my buddy is also a speaker-author dude, and he said, “Wow, never in any of my programming has the goal been to have someone feel totally disempowered and to feel the need to withdraw.” So, that’s a thing that can happen sometimes during the course of engaging in these conversations. Any pro tips on having that not happen for people?

Kwame Christian
Yeah, so let’s approach it from two different perspectives. So, let’s first approach it from the person’s perspective who said, “You know what, I’m out. This is too much.” And so, fear can masquerade in different forms, and oftentimes, it will take the form that is most persuasive to you. And so, I was talking to somebody earlier today, and she was saying, “Listen, I feel overwhelmed, I feel ill-equipped to have these conversations so I’m just not having to have these conversations.”

And I said, “See, you’re an intelligent person, and what you’re doing is you’re overintellectualizing the situation and saying, ‘I need to study more. I need to study more,’ and you keep on moving the goalpost just in order to make sure that you never put yourself in a position where you’re obligated to have the conversation, or you feel worthy of having the conversation.” And so, what this person is probably doing is saying, “Wow, I’m seeing the risks. This is scary. I am going to back out.” And backing out does nothing but protect her from her own emotional discomfort. And so, we have to look into it and see how fear will operate in these situations.

And then for the person who might see this happening, we use compassionate curiosity, and so we might say, “Hey, I noticed you stopped coming to the meetings. What happened?” “Well, I didn’t feel comfortable coming to the meetings.” “Okay, so it sounds like you were a little bit uncomfortable and maybe a little bit afraid of making a mistake?” “Yeah, that’s how I’m feeling,” and then they explain.

And then we move to getting curious with compassion, “Well, what is making you so afraid?” “Well, I’m afraid of making a mistake.” “Okay, tell me more.” “Well, I also feel a little bit overwhelmed because I should’ve been doing more but I haven’t been doing more.” Okay. Now, let’s get joint problem-solving, So, it seems like, based on what you said, you want to do more. Well, what are the things you can do that can make you feel as though you’re doing more?” “Well, I could start coming back to these meetings.”

Right. That’s it. Simple. Exactly how the conversation could go. But I wanted to kind of flow through how the compassionate-curiosity framework could work in that situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And I guess I’m thinking, so that’s from her perspective. I guess, also, the people coordinating the thing could share some of the comforting words that you’ve been sharing, like, “Hey, this is tricky for people. It’s challenging. There are some risks. It’s going to feel uncomfortable, and that’s just how it’s going to be. We have different associations. There are some complexities.” And they’ll go, “Oh, okay. Huh, this is hard for everybody, and that’s okay.”

Kwame Christian
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Okay. Well, here’s another scenario. This was at a Fortune 500 company, and they had a huge meeting in which they announced, “Henceforth, the goal is by…” I don’t know, 2027 or some couple years away date, “….X percent of the positions above level five…” I don’t know in their system, like direct duration above, they had sort of a numbering system for sort of executive seniority power. You know what I’m saying?

So, “X percent of these positions will be filled by black people.” And so then, on the chat, there’s a whole lot of muttering going on, and everyone’s saying, “Oh, I see. Well, what percent is going to be Asians, and women, and disabilities, and elderly folks, and LatinX?” “Oh, okay.” So, they’re kind of miffed about this and maybe they didn’t feel included.

There’s just sort of like they felt like this is just being thrown upon them or they don’t understand what’s at it, or they think maybe there’s not, I don’t know, structural fairness. I don’t know precisely what their beef is but that is a response that can happen when there is a fiat, and saying, “This is how it is with regard to race, everybody,” and then the murmuring begins. Any pro tips on dealing with that better?

Kwame Christian
Yeah. So, it’s funny, Pete, when you said that, I had the immediate response, I said, “Oh, okay. Well, we’re opening up Pandora’s box here because there are many other races that are underrepresented there too, right?” And I think this is a really great example of the ubiquitous nature of these conversations because we can talk about the book title in terms of how to have difficult conversations about race, but, really, we could substitute any sensitive topic.

And so, we think about age discrimination, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, all of that type of stuff. The same underlying frameworks can apply to those situations. And so, I think it really comes down to having a conversation about, first of all, “What’s the problem that we want to solve?” And then figuring out, “What other problems do we want to solve at the same time?” because the choice did cause some murmuring. We cannot ignore that murmuring and pretend it doesn’t exist.

And so, it’s important for us to lean into that conversation and have it at a high level and be open and transparent about it just to make sure that everybody feels seen and appreciated.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, Kwame, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few more of your favorite things?

Kwame Christian
At the end of the day, really, what we have to do is we have to have these conversations. If there’s anything that I want your listeners to take from this is that we have to keep this simple. Have the conversations and use the framework, and that’s better than the alternative.

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

Kwame Christian
“The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.” That’s the motto of the American Negotiation Institute, and that’s really the ethos that I tried to bring into each of the books, the podcast, and the trainings that we do.

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

Kwame Christian
One of the things that a lot of communication experts like to talk about is the importance of empathy, and I’m not different. I talk about it, too, but I think one thing that people have to appreciate is the fact that empathy is very, very difficult for some specific reasons.

When you look at the studies related to in-group versus out-group bias, it is much easier for us to empathize with people who are like us. So, think about a non-race-related example. Imagine you’re watching a football game, and somebody gets hurt from your team. Let’s say they hurt their knee. You will reflexively reach down and, like, almost grab your knee. You’ll wince. You’ll feel their pain. That happens automatically.

But if somebody else from the other team gets hurt, you don’t have that type of sympathetic response. You might actually cheer. That’s the tribal nature of humanity. But on a deep subconscious psychological level, it’s easier for us to empathize with people who see us as one of them, as part of their tribe, as part of the group.

And so, I think a couple of things that we need to realize is, number one, empathy takes effort especially when the other person is different from you. And, number two, we can trigger a little bit more automatic empathy in our direction by being mindful of how we can mobilize biases in our favor. So, an example of that is affinity bias, “I like people who are like me.”

So, at the beginning of every conversation, my goal is to approach this rapport-building stage from the perspective of getting the other person to see me as one of them. We are on the same team. We might look different, we might have different perspectives, but when it all comes down to it, we’re on the same team. And just taking the time to really pull that together, helps us to trigger more of that automatic empathy and makes the conversations a lot easier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Kwame Christian
Well, my favorite book used to be “Finding Confidence in Conflict” and now my favorite book is “How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race.” Is that too self-serving, Pete?

Kwame Christian
But I will say, I did find particular joy in reading “How to Not Lose Your…” stuff, I’ll edit it, How to Not Lose Stuff with Your Kids. So, talking about emotional regulation for parents. And so, it’s hard for me to pick a favorite book because I try to read a book a week, and so, usually, it’s the one that is closer, like most recent to me that registers the most, like recency bias, ha, ha, bias is everywhere. So, I’ll give a shoutout to that book as a recommendation for all the parents out there.

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

Kwame Christian
LinkedIn. It has to be LinkedIn. I am addicted to LinkedIn. I post every day, and it’s been really rewarding connecting with people on LinkedIn. So, if you use LinkedIn, make sure to connect with me, follow me. I always try to be really generous with content on that platform.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Kwame Christian
Going to the gym in the morning, I’d say. I’m realizing more and more that this is, I guess, what Charles Duhigg would call a keystone habit because a lot of good habits come from that because it’s tied to my meditation routine, it’s tied to my gratitude journal in the morning. So, working out in the morning is happening, then I know a lot of other good things are happening too.

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

Kwame Christian
So, check out the podcast Negotiate Anything, and also our other podcast Negotiate Real Change, which is about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, but using negotiation and conflict resolution as a tool to promote it. But for general leadership, conflict resolution, negotiation, sales, that type of interpersonal communication, check out Negotiate Anything. And then, also, reach out to me on our website the AmericanNegotiationInstitute.com. And if you’re interested in trainings, workshops, coaching, all of that type of stuff, you can reach out to us there.

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

Kwame Christian
Yes, everybody, the challenge is this. Use the framework. Use compassionate curiosity. If you have the opportunity to interact with a human being within the next 24 hours, I guarantee you, you’ll have an opportunity to put these skills into action. So, whenever you have that opportunity, remember, acknowledge and validate emotions, get curious with compassion, and use joint problem-solving, and just get into the habit of using that and it’ll be your best friend in those dark times when you’re having those tough conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kwame, this has been a treat. I wish you much good things on the other side of difficult conversations.

Kwame Christian
I appreciate it, my friend. Thanks for having me on.

Aug 25
0

REBROADCAST: 719: Liz Wiseman Reveals the Five Practices of Indispensable, High-Impact Players

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Liz Wiseman says: "By working on the agenda, you earn the right to help set the agenda."

Liz Wiseman uncovers the small, but impactful practices of exceptional performers.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why it’s okay to not be working on what’s important to you 
  2. The five things impact players do differently
  3. The trick to leading without an invitation 

UPDATE: Sign up for Liz’s new masterclass and learn what the best professionals do to stand out and perform at their best. Early bird registration is FREE with your purchase of Liz’s new book Impact Players.

PLUS, we’re giving away copies of Liz’s book! We’ll be picking 5 random winners who share a link to this post on LinkedIn, along with their favorite nugget of wisdom from the episode. Don’t forget to tag both Pete and Liz in your post! Giveaway ends August 27, Saturday, 11:59 PM Central time.

About Liz

Liz Wiseman is a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives around the world. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,; The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. 

She is the CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Some of her recent clients include: Apple, AT&T, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and in 2019 was recognized as the top leadership thinker in the world. 

She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and a variety of other business and leadership journals.  She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU and StanfordUniversity and is a former executive at Oracle Corporation, where she worked as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development. 

Resources Mentioned

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Liz Wiseman Interview Transcript

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

Liz Wiseman
Well, thanks, Pete. I hope I walk away feeling like I can be a little bit more awesome at my job. This is your thing. This is what you do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think I’ve mentioned, before we pushed record, that numerous people have mentioned you by name as being awesome at your job from your book Multipliers. And you’ve got another one freshly out Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact. All things we love doing here, so this is going to be a lot of fun.

Liz Wiseman
This is going to be a fun conversation, I can tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so maybe to kick us off, could you share with us your favorite story of someone who made a transformation into an impact player and kind of what happened? What was the impact of that and kind of their before and after, and the results flowing from it?

Liz Wiseman
Well, so many of the people I wrote about were already awesome when I stumbled onto them. And the one I think, like if I could pick someone in the book who made the biggest transformation, it might’ve been me. Like, early on in my career, reorienting myself.

So, I came out of college like a lot of people, kind of fired up, knowing…I mean, some people don’t know what they want to do. I knew what I wanted to do to a fault. And I kind of was like knocking on people’s doors, like, “Hi, I’m Liz. I want to teach leadership and I represent good leadership. And ridding the world of bad bosses, that’s what I want to do.”

And so, I tried to get a job at a management training company and somehow wiggled my way into an interview with the president. He looked at my resume and was like, “You know, if you want to teach leadership, maybe you should go get some leadership experience.” I was like 22 years old and thinking, “That’s sterile-minded of him.” It’s kind of like he doesn’t get me. This is what I’m passionate about. It’s what I want to do.”

So, I went and took my backup job, and that one was at Oracle, which was a great place to go to work but it wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do, which was somehow teach managing and leading. So, I took this kind of consolation job, and about a year into that, I had an opportunity to transfer to another group inside of the company. This was back when Oracle was like a couple thousand people, and today they’re like well over a hundred thousand people.

And it was a group that ran technical bootcamps and I was hoping that their charter would expand, like the company is growing, they’re surely going to be building some management courses, young people are being turned into management, like wreaking havoc on the company. And so, I went into the interview, answered the questions from the VP, so it’s like the final interview for this job, and then it was my turn to kind of take charge of the interview. And so, I made my case for why Oracle should build a management bootcamp, not just a technology bootcamp. And, of course, I offered my services, like, “I would be happy to build this.”

And I thought, for sure, he would say, “Oh, that’s great, Liz. Yeah, I can see you’re passionate about that. Here you go.” And his response, it really, really imprinted me. And he was polite but essentially what I heard him saying was, “Liz, make yourself useful around here,” because his reply was, “That’s great, Liz. We think you’re great and we’re excited to have you join this group but your boss has a different problem. She’s got to figure out how to get 2,000 new college graduates up to speed in Oracle technology over the next year. And what would be great is if you could help her to do that.”

He was saying, “Liz, figure out what needs to be done and do the things that we need.” And I wanted to teach leadership and now he wants me to teach programming to a bunch of nerds, you know, programmers. And I’m like, “Oh, that’s not my thing. That’s not the job I want.” But I could see he was teaching me something. I’m like, “That’s not the job I want,” but what he’s saying was, “That’s the job that needs to be done.” So, like, “Point yourself over there, please.”

And it really shaped me because I said, “Okay, I don’t want to do that but I will do that and I’ll figure out how to be good at this.” And, Pete, I’m woefully underqualified to do this job. I came out of business school and had a teaching background, but I had taken like two and a half programming classes in college, and now they want me to be teaching programming to a bunch of hotshot programmers coming out of MIT and Caltech but I did it and it was amazing what happened after I reoriented myself, and, in some ways, subordinated what was important to me to work on what was important to my boss and my boss’ boss.

First of all, I figured out I love this job. Like, this was fun. I was having the time of my life. And then the second thing I discovered is that by doing that, all these opportunities opened up to me. And they came and tapped me on the shoulders, and said, “Liz, we want you to now manage the training group.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m having fun teaching.” They’re like, “No, we want you to do this.” I’m like, “Yeah, pick someone else who wants that job.” And they said, “No, we want you to do this.”

And I don’t know if it was because I understood the technology or it was because I was willing to serve where I was needed, but, yeah, I finally said yes to that job. And then I just kept getting bigger and bigger opportunities, and I think it was because I learned to channel my energy and passion around what was important to the people I work for rather than focusing on what was important to me.

And it shaped my whole career and just allowed me to do work that was far more impactful. And it wasn’t too many years, if not even months, after that that I was able to argue that, “You know what, we really need to invest in management training and I’d be happy to do that.” And then, I, essentially, got a blank check, like, “Liz, absolutely. Go build that. Build a team to do it.” And that work had so much more impact when I decided to work on the agenda of the organization rather than on my own agenda.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that feels like a golden key to a whole lot of career things right there. And I guess what’s intriguing is, well, one, you were fortunate in that you got to do the thing you really wanted to do anyway afterwards. And, two, I suppose, I’m thinking, that approach, in a way, it feels rather noble and virtuous in terms of, hey, there’s some humility and there’s some service and generosity that you are engaging in when you’re working on the job that needs done as opposed to the thing you want to do.

I guess I just might want to hear to what extent was there drudgery? Or, it sounds like in your story, this path was actually plenty of fun even while you were on it prior to doing the thing that you really wanted to do originally. Is that the case with the other impact players, generally speaking?

Liz Wiseman
Well, I think it is. And you said it was sort of a noble choice, and I think it was a humble choice. I wouldn’t characterize it as a noble choice as much as a savvy choice. And it wasn’t like I was just like, “Okay. Well, what’s good for me in this?” I could see there was a real need there but something happens when you are working on something that’s important.

So, like if I’m off working on my own agenda, I’m pushing a boulder up a hill. I’m trying to get people to meet with me. I’m trying to get someone to pay attention to the thing I care about. Now, some amazing things can happen when you go down that path. But, like, what happens when you’re working on something that’s important? It’s what I call when you’re working on the agenda.

Well, every time I put myself on this path of impact, working on something that was important to the company, the executive, one of my clients, I always find that people have time to meet with me, resources flow. Like, I’ve done a lot of work with executives over the years, and one of the things I’ve noticed is I’ve never noticed like a senior executive at a corporation tell me something was important to him or her, and then not have budget for it.

It’s like funny how that when you’re working on the agenda, people have time for you, resources flow, decisions happen quickly, there’s more pressure but there’s also more visibility for your work. Like, it’s not drudgery. It’s actually fun because you’re making progress. And when you say drudgery, Pete, it makes me think about something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is burnout. We’re dealing with this burnout epidemic, the Great Reshuffle, the Great Resignation, whatever you want to call it. And I think we’re quick to assume that burnout is a function of effort and work. Like, we’re working too hard. We’re working too much. We have too heavy of a load and we’re going to burn out as a result.

And I’m not opposed to anyone taking time off. Like, a little R&R is probably good for a lot of people particularly right now, but I think burnout, based on all of my research, it tends to be a function of too little impact, not too much work. That what causes us to burn out is when we’re expending energy but not making a difference, not seeing how our work makes a difference.

So, like the beginning of being high impact and doing awesome work is doing work that is valued and important. And even if some of the work is tedious, like, oh, man, I remember like nights I stayed up till 5:00 in the morning trying to learn how to do correlated subqueries so I could teach them the next day. I couldn’t sustain that all the time, but I was making a difference. I was having an impact. I was doing something important. It was energizing not enervating.

And, yeah, there’s details and drudgery and hard things involved but it’s rewarding. It’s what I’ve seen in my own experience in studying these high-impact contributors. It’s a buildup experience not a burnout experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s beautiful in terms of that’s just a fun mental distinction that does so much. When you’re working on the agenda, what’s important to other folks, so many of the roadblocks that are annoying and frustrating and yield to burnout and exhaustion disappear. People are available, they make time for you, they make money for you, they take your meetings, you’ve got some support and backing as opposed to being ignored, and follow-ups. So, yeah, like that’s pretty fine.

Liz Wiseman
And you build voice. You build voice in the organization, and it’s how we build influence and credibility is by making progress on things that matter to our stakeholders. And so, as we do that and as we serve, people listen to us. And by working on the agenda, you earn the right to help set the agenda.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m loving this and that’s a lot of insight right there. So, tell me, is that pretty much the core idea or thesis of Impact Players? Or, how would you articulate it?

Liz Wiseman
I just think it’s one of the starting points is how people orient themselves. And I think if I were to kind of try to crystallize the thesis of Impact Players, let me start with the research. We looked at the difference between individuals who were considered by their leaders smart, hardworking, and capable people who were doing a good job, like doing well, versus smart, hardworking, capable people who were making an extraordinary impact, doing work of extraordinary or inordinately high value.

And so, this isn’t like top performers versus bottom performers. In a room full of equally smart, capable, hardworking people, why are some people stuck going through the motions of their job while other people are making a big difference? So, that’s what we looked at. And when I looked at those differentials and all the profiles that we built through interviewing 170 managers is we found that the ordinary contributors, typical contributors, people doing well, they’re doing their job.

And this is how managers describe them. They do their job. They do their job well. Often, extremely well. They follow direction. They take ownership. They are focused. They carry their weight on teams, which sounds great in some ways, like ideal team members and contributors but there’s stellar and unordinary times, but they tend to fall short in times of uncertainty and ambiguity. This is where the impact players handle these situations very differently, and there were five.

And it was how they handle messy problems, like, “Your job is not my job. It’s like no one’s job. It’s not really owned by this department. It’s like no one’s job but everyone’s job.” And this is actually where I think the most important problems and opportunities of an organization is in that white space between boxes. Now, in this case, ordinary contributors tend to do their job. Whereas, the impact players go do the job that needs to be done.

The second is how they handle unclear roles, where, “Okay, I know we’re collaborating, but who’s really in charge?” We have a tendency, organizations want to have more collaborative teams, flat in organizations but in these situations, typical contributors tend to wait for role clarification or direction, like wait for someone to tell them who’s in charge or give them formal authority. Whereas, the people who are having a lot of impact tend to just take charge but they’re not like take charge all the time.

They step up and they lead, maybe a particular meeting, maybe a project, but then they’re willing to step back and follow other people when they’re in the lead. So, it’s like they bring kind of big leadership, let’s say, to the 2:00 o’clock meeting, they’re the boss, but they then walk down the hall to the 3:00 o’clock meeting and they serve as a participant with the same kind of energy that they led the team. So, they’re able to step in and out of these leadership roles really fluidly, which really builds our credibility because we trust these kinds of leaders, the ones who don’t always need to hold all the power.

Pete Mockaitis
And the ones who care when it’s not “theirs.” That’s sort of endearing. It’s sort of like, “Okay, you care about this because you care about the team, the leadership, the project, the company and not just you care about your babies.”

Liz Wiseman
Oh, absolutely. It’s like they work with the same kind of level of intensity. They don’t need to be in charge but they’re willing to be in charge. And I think it’s a really powerful form of leadership. And it’s very much like sort of you take like the pyramid shape of an organization, and you turn that on its side. It’s more like the V formation of a flock of geese, where the flock can fly a lot further because they rotate that leadership.

One bird goes out in front, leads, breaks that wind, creates drag, sort of creates an ease for the other birds behind in that formation, but that lead bird doesn’t stay there forever like until it tires and then falls from the sky in the state of exhaustion, which is what happens so often in corporations. The leaders are running around with their hair on fire. They’re like all fired up, they’re working hard, but other people sit underutilized. Like, when the lead bird has done their duty for the team, they fall back and another moves into that role.

And then there’s three other situations where we see this differentiation when unforeseen obstacles drop in the way, things that are really out of your control. Most people tend to escalate those, whereas the impact players just tend to hold onto them and get them across the finish line. Not alone, pulling in help but they tend to just hold ownership all the way through.

When targets are moving fast, typical contributors tend to stay on target, they stay focused, whereas, the impact players adjust. They’re adapting. They’re changing. They’re like kind of waking up assuming, “While I was asleep, the world changed, and I probably need to adjust my aim so I stay on track with what’s important and relevant.”

And the last is what we do when workloads are heavy, like when there’s just mounting workloads, when there’s more work than…when the workload is increasing faster than resources are increasing, and most people, they carry their weight, but when times get really tough, they sort of look upward and outward for help to ease that burden.

Whereas, the impact players, we found they really make work light. Like, they don’t take all the work, they don’t take people’s workload away from them, but they work in a way where hard work just is fun. They bring a levity, a humanity, that just sort of eases the phantom workload so that people can focus on the real workload.

Liz Wiseman
That’s kind of what I found.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I was going to ask exactly that, so thank you for sharing. And so, that’s sort of like the five core distinctions. And I want to zoom in on a couple like super specific practices, habits. But, first, maybe I’d like to get your take on what discovery, in the course of all these interviews, did you find most surprising or counterintuitive?

Liz Wiseman
I should probably tell you I’ve got a little bit of a pessimist in me which maybe makes me a better researcher. But when we went in to study, like, “What is it that the top, real top contributors are doing?” I expected there to be a fair number of hotshots and superstars and people around whom the team revolved, and what I found was exactly the opposite. There were 170 of these impact players that we studied, analyzed. Not a single one of them was a prima donna, a bully, a bull in a China shop. Not one of them worked at the expense of the team, like, “Hey, I’m so good at what I do that you all need to kind of like be backup for me, or sort of accommodate me, humor me.”

They were superstars and everyone knew it. Like, that’s one of the things about impact players is everyone knows who these people are but they work and I think they’re comfortable with their stellar-ness, their awesomeness, like they get it.

Pete Mockaitis
They don’t have to prove themselves or flex or show off.

Liz Wiseman
Yeah. In some ways, and I’m just realizing this, Pete, is one of the things I found in the multiplier leader, so the other research I’ve done, like, “What is it that leaders do that allow people to be impactful and contribute at their fullest?” And the ones, the leaders I want to work for are the ones that are really, really comfortable with their own intelligence and capability. Like, I want to work for someone who’s an absolute genius who knows it, which you think, “Ooh, well, isn’t that like a know-it-all, a bully?” Like, no, I want to work with someone who’s so comfortable with their own intelligence and capability that they’re over it.

It’s not like, “I have to show up to work every day proving how amazing I am.” It’s like, “Yeah, I get it. I’m smart. I’m talented. I’m over it so now I can spend my time as a leader seeing and using the intelligence of others.” And I think these impact players are similar in that they know that they’re really valuable contributors, they know they do important and valuable work, but they don’t need to be proving it all day long. In some ways, it’s so obvious. They were comfortable with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool.

Liz Wiseman
I thought there’d be some brilliant jerks in the lot but there weren’t, at least not in my sample.

Pete Mockaitis
And then these 170, they were identified by their managers, they’re saying, “Boy, this guy is really an impact player”?

Liz Wiseman
Yeah, they were. And so, we didn’t go in and decide who was. We asked managers to consider the people that they have led over their career and identify someone from each of these two categories – impact players, ordinary contributors – and we also had managers identify someone who I later called an under-contributor – smart, capable, talented, should be amazing, like someone you hire, like, “This person is going to be awesome,” but yet they’re not. Like, they’re under-contributing relative to their potential and capability. And that was interesting. There’s like a whole set of things to learn there.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s different than the five key distinctions that we already covered? Like, they don’t do the things that the impact players do or is there more?

Liz Wiseman
Well, I think kind of in that ordinary contributor station, like you would see people who are well-meaning, working hard, and they’re doing their job. When you see people in that under-contributor kind of position, sort of on the stratification, you see a lot of people who are really pushing their own agenda, you often see people who are trying so hard to be valuable, trying so hard to like get ahead, maybe that they’re honestly annoying.

Like, “Hey, hey, how am I doing? How am I doing? Am I doing great? Was it good work? Hey, hey, coach, what? Can I sit next to you on the airplane? You know what, hey, let’s go hang out.” They’re needy, maybe needing too much attention, needing too much feedback, and they end up becoming more of a burden than a contributor on teams, but, yet, they’re people who are trying really hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. Cool. Well, so then I love how we’ve laid out the five distinctions. And now I’d like to get really specific in terms of what are the particular mindsets, or habits, or particular practices, words, phrases, just like the super in-the-moment tactical, practical stuff that we’re seeing in terms of an impact player? I sort of got the conceptual. Could you give us a couple examples of, “Hey, these are the specific actions that we’re seeing over and over again”?

Liz Wiseman
We talked about the first distinction kind of through my own experience, is this willingness to do the job that needs to be done. It’s about extending ourselves like beyond our job boundaries. One of the favorite impact players I got to write about in the book is someone named Jojo Mirador, and he is a scrub tech. He works at Valley Medical, which is part of an academic hospital chain.

So, there are a lot of residents there, doctors who have graduated from medical school. They’re now in their training. They’re in residency. And he’s a surgical scrub tech. Now, Jojo’s job is to prepare the surgical tools for an operation, to make sure they’re sterilized and available, and to hand them to the surgeons when the surgeons ask for them. That’s his job.

But Jojo approaches his job differently than other scrub techs. First of all, he looks on the calendar, and he’s like, “What surgeries do we have coming up? Are there any that I’m not familiar with? Let me look. Let me just like Google that and figure out what’s going on in the surgery.” And during surgery, he’s not just listening for the requested instrument.

Pete Mockaitis
“Scalpel.”

Liz Wiseman
Yeah, scalpel. Exactly. It’s like such a moment. He’s watching the surgeons’ hands, he’s like, “I want to know what the surgeon is doing because I want to know what their next move is going to be because I want to be thinking about the tool they need, so I’m ready.” And one of the surgeons told me, “Jojo doesn’t just lay out the instruments. He lays them out in the order they’re going to be used so he’s got them ready.”

And when the surgeons ask for an instrument, he doesn’t just hand them the one they asked for. He hands them the one they actually need. So, let’s say they’ve asked for like a scalpel, and he provides a gentle suggestion, he’s like, “Why don’t you try this one instead that might work better?” Of course, these residents, they’re young, they’re new, and you can imagine the pressure on them to look like they know what they’re doing when they’re holding someone’s life in their hands. And you can imagine how grateful they are that he doesn’t just do his job. He extends himself and does the job that needs to be done.

And you would think that the senior surgeons wouldn’t want these suggestions, but they do, in fact. He said, “It kind of feels good. They come seek me out before a surgery.” They say, “Jojo, here’s what we’re going to be doing. What kinds of tools do you think are going to work best here?” And they line up outside of the scheduler’s office, they kind of fight a little bit over who gets to have Jojo in the OR with them.

And they found this nice gentleman’s way of sorting this out. It’s whoever has the most complicated procedure is the one who gets Jojo. And I love the imagery of this, which is just extending ourselves out of our job scope, but not doing it in an aggressive way of taking over. It’s done with this kind of sense of finesse of, “I think I can be helpful here.”

Another one of the behaviors we see is that these impact players, they don’t tend to wait for an invitation. I think a lot of people want to be amazing at their job, who have a lot of passion, who have a lot of talent, or maybe holding back a little bit, too much waiting for someone to come along and discover them.

And maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my career teaching leaders, coaching executives, part of my message to people is like, “Ooh, your leaders probably aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they’re thinking about you. They’ve got their own set of things and they probably don’t have time to figure out, ‘Okay, wait a minute. I’ve got this meeting coming up. Who are all the possible people who might be valuable contributors?’” Like, sometimes, we need to invite ourselves in and go where we’re uninvited but do it in a way that people are glad we showed up to contribute.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really interesting because I think this has come up a number of times, like, “Oh, so many things you attend, it’s unnecessary, it’s a waste of time, and you should figure out polite ways to excuse yourself from them.” And this might be the first time I’ve heard someone say, “There may be times where you want to try to get into a meeting that you weren’t invited to.” And the way that could be super appreciated, like, maybe can you give us some verbiage or an example there, because I can imagine ways you might say it that could come across as appreciated as opposed to like, “Whoa, stay in your lane, buddy”? Could you give us an example there?

Liz Wiseman
Yeah, let me share two. One is about just initiating meetings that no one’s asking you to do. Eli Van Der Kamp at Target, she’s a project manager there, and her job is to get all the technology in a Target store up to speed and ready to go before a store opens. Well, this isn’t her area of responsibility but she can see that, “You know what, we’ve been dropping phonelines in here.” And her job was to get them up and running, but she’s like, “I don’t think we actually need those phonelines because, now that we have fiber optic cables, the phonelines that were needed for the alarm systems in the store, like fire alarms, we don’t need those.”

But it wasn’t that they didn’t need them, they sometimes needed them, and it was sort of complicated, and no one’s asking her to do this, but she realizes the company is wasting money on this. It’s a $92 billion a year company, it’s not a significant amount of waste in a company that size. But it’s significant enough, she decides she wants to do something about, so she just kind of invites herself to lead this meeting, calls people together, explains the problem with no sense of judgment whatsoever, “But we have this problem, and we’re like buying phonelines that we don’t need and it’s wasting money.”

And she just lays it out and invites people to step up and solve it. It was a complex decision tree. They worked it all out, owners stepped up, emerged, the problem is solved and she steps back. It’s sort of like inviting yourself in to lead and volunteering to lead where nobody has asked you. Now, it could be inviting yourself to a meeting nobody is inviting. So, I had experience with this, it was probably midway through my career. It preceded the most valuable piece of work I ever did for Oracle.

And I think, at this point, like I’m the vice president of Oracle University. I ran training for the company in human resource development, and I’ve particularly been focusing on some executive development, and had been working with three top executives to build this what was our flagship leadership development program. We called it The Leaders Forum. And it really consisted of two parts, which is teach our executives around the world like our strategy so they really understood that, and then build some leadership skills.

And in the process of doing this, it became clear that the strategy was not clear. So, we were bringing executives in, like 30 people at a time, presenting the strategy to them, building some skills, setting them on their way, and they’re like, “You know, the strategy is not clear.” So, the three executives I was building this program with, we heard the feedback, and we tried to make some adjustments, and it’s still not clear.

Finally, it comes to a head and we realized we have to stop these training programs until the strategy for the company is clear. I’m in that meeting. We decide this needs to happen. One of the three executives says, “Okay, you know what, I’ll get together a meeting of all of our product heads, all of the senior executives, and we will clarify the strategy.” Okay. So, I know that meeting is happening but I’m not included in this meeting because it’s a product strategy meeting and I’m responsible for training. But the meeting was happening the next week, and I decided that I probably should go to that meeting, not just to listen in, but I felt like I could really help.

And so, this is, I don’t know, this was a meeting of, let’s say, nine of the top 12 executives in the company, and I just decided to show up. And so, I show up, I knew the president would be thrilled that I was there, maybe not some of the others, but I get there early, I sit down, and one by one, like the various executives are coming in, they’re kind of like, “Hi, Liz,” and they know this is a product strategy meeting and they’ve got the head of training there. And they’re like, “Hi, Hi.” And then one particular executive came in, his name was Jerry, and he looked at me, and he’s like, “What are you doing here? Like, you’re the training manager. This is a product strategy meeting.”

And this was an important moment for me because I kind of squared my shoulders, looked at him, and said, “Jerry, we’ve got a really convoluted strategy right now that leaders around the world aren’t able to understand. Like, this group has got to take a lot of complex information about our products and distill it down to something that’s simple and clear, and that’s actually something that I’m pretty good at and I thought I could be of help.”

And he still wasn’t entirely convinced but I think the president said something like, “Yeah, Jerry, Liz is really good at this. And trust me, we could use her help.” And then I just paid attention, and I listened, and I listened to this conversation. Now, the fact that I had taken that job teaching programming helped me to really understand what they were talking about and be trusted to even be in the room, but I’m like taking notes.

I’m like, “Okay, what about this? And I like this pattern.” So, I’m now starting to reflect back to them, “Well, here’s this issue that I see coming up and I hear this, and it seems like these seem to be the three biggest drivers.” And they’re like, “Could you say more of that?” And it’s a longer story but, cutting it short, after two or three more of these meetings, they finally decided that they’re going to kind of obliterate the whole strategy, rebuild it from scratch, and they’re like, “Liz, we want you to be the author of the strategy. Like, we’ll all give you input but we want you to be the one that puts shape to this.”

And it was something I was able to do and it made a pretty big impact in the company, and I just think it’s so funny that maybe the most valuable work I did for the company was work I kind of forced myself into just a little bit. And I wasn’t forceful and I wasn’t rude but nobody asked me to do it. I just knew it was something I could be helpful with.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Okay. Well, so then any other examples leaping to mind in terms of a particular practice that makes a load of difference, sort of a small difference but huge leverage?

Liz Wiseman
Well, one of the ones I found was so interesting was this how people handle moving targets. And do you kind stick to what you’ve agreed to? Like, someone gave you a target, “We’re trying to increase market share by 12% year-over-year.” That’s like your goal, maybe your business development meter. What we find is that ordinary contributors tend to stick to those targets and they stay focused, whereas the impact players are constantly adjusting. In some ways, they’re reactive.

I wouldn’t say they’re reactionary but they react differently. Like, they’re assuming that they’re off target. So, it’s kind of like the metaphor I would use here would be like a violinist. So, if you play the violin, you know that you have to constantly tune that instrument. And, honestly, it was kind of mysterious to me when I was younger, like maybe younger up until like just a couple of years ago when I was like, “Why can’t they tune their instrument before they get up onto that stage? Like, why do they play poorly before they play well?”

And it’s like because even that movement from their backstage to centerstage, they’ve got to tune it before they perform. And it’s this tuning mentality, like lots of little small adjustments. And what we found the impact players do is they respond well to feedback but they don’t wait for feedback. They’re asking for feedback before it’s offered.

Shawn Vanderhoven, is someone who works on my team, and when Shawn started working for me, he would ask questions when he’d start a project, “Okay, what’s the target here? What does a win look like? What are we trying to accomplish?” And once he understood that, he would then start submitting work as part of that, and then he would ask a different set of questions, like, “Are you getting what you need? What can I do differently? What do I need to change so that it better fits the need?”

And he does this with such frequency that he then goes and corrects his works, comes back, submits it. But in the five years I’ve worked with Shawn, I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever had to sit down and have a tough conversation with him. I’ve never had to sit down, and say, “You know, Shawn, this is off and I need you to get it back on.” And it’s not that he doesn’t need that correction, we all do, but he always beats me to it. He’s fixing and changing and adjusting before I ever ask. Like, he’s doing the asking. And it’s so easy to give him feedback.

And one of the other like little distinctions that makes a really big difference is that people aren’t…these impact players aren’t focusing the feedback on themselves, like, “How am I doing? What do I need to do differently?” The focus is on the work, “How can I make this work better?” So, where others are maybe reacting to feedback people give them about themselves and their performance, the impact player is getting information to help them constantly adjust and tune their work so that their work is relevant and on tune.

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

Liz Wiseman
Well, maybe if there was an overarching theme that separated the impact players from everyone else, and I should say it’s not really about people. It’s more about mindsets that we tend to operate in. It’s like what separates an impact player mindset, that I and others tend to go in and out of from sort of a contributor mindset, is how we deal with uncertainty and ambiguity. And the difference we found is that the impact players, when they encounter situations that are out of their control, they tend to dive head in to these situations, kind of like the way an ocean swimmer, or a surfer, like seizes massive oncoming wave that’s kind of scary, like I would turn and run, panic, and get tumbled in the surf, but they dive head into and through this wave.

And they tend to move into uncertainty and they tend to look at that uncertainty and ambiguity through an opportunity lens rather than a threat lens. Like, where other people see, “Ooh, that’s uncomfortable. Roles are unclear. That’s messy. That’s out of my control. Let me back away from it.” The impact players kind of wear opportunity goggles and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s messy, uncertain, uncomfortable, but there’s…let me find an opportunity to add value.” So, they tend to bring clarity to situations that other people tend to steer clear of.

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

Liz Wiseman
Criss Jami, “Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live.” And when I saw that, and I just saw this today, I thought, “That really captures a lot of what I’ve learned studying these people who were having a lot of impact is that they are not like pushing an agenda, they’re not necessarily pursuing a lifestyle. It’s they’re finding a situation that needs them and contributing wholeheartedly in that.”

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

Liz Wiseman
I think maybe the one that is most useful to the work I do is just this idea that we tend to overestimate our capability, that I think it’s the Kruger-Dunning effect, that we tend to think we’re better at things than we actually are. And this is the dynamic that I’ve seen play out in my work, kind of studying the best leaders, is that when we get put into a leadership role, we tend to focus on our intent, and we tend to not see our impact on others. Like, most of my work is about looking into this space between our intent and our impact, like learning not to operate based on our best intentions but to actually operate based on the effect that we’re having on others.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Liz Wiseman
I’ll give you one that this is a book I like because it made me so mad. I was really jealous when I read it, like kind of green with jealousy because the book is Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull. And the reason why I love it is because, A, it’s an amazing book, and Ed Catmull is an amazing storyteller.

And it’s a story of Pixar, if you’re not familiar with the book, so it’s really like looking into “Why does Pixar consistently produce amazing films. Like, is that an accident or is there actually a system behind that?” And the answer is there’s a system behind it, there’s a reason why, and it’s not coincidence, and it’s how they lead and it’s the culture they built. And the reason why this book made me so mad is I got that reading and it was not too long after I had written Rookie Smarts and I’m like, “Wow, this is an amazing illustration of Rookie Smarts. It’s like what happens when you’re new to something and the innovation that comes out of it.”

And it’s an amazing example of what I call multiplier leadership. Leaders like Ed Catmull who use their talent and intelligence to bring out the best in others. And I’m like, “Wow, how did he do in one book what took me two books to do? And he did it better than that.” But I really loved that book and it’s full of fun, interesting, very practical ways of leading.

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

Liz Wiseman
Index cards. Succinct is not my strength and so I have to work at succinct in writing and in speaking. And so, I use index cards, and when I’m pulling together final thoughts before giving a talk, a presentation, if it can’t get on the index card, it’s not part of it. So, I use it to really boil down my thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Liz Wiseman
I think a favorite habit would be, I guess, I call it check in before diving in. And I’ve been there, like some people would say that I’m a workhorse, like I’m definitely not a racehorse. I’m a workhorse. I’m one of those people who just like grind through stuff. And I usually like to get right to work and I’m excited about it, I jump in. And one of the things I’ve learned to do with my own team is before we start working on something, to just take sometimes up to half of our allotted time and just check in, like, “How are you? How are you doing?”

And it’s gone well beyond pleasantries, and it’s typically like a chance for people to say, “You know, I’m not doing well. I’m struggling.” And sometimes we’ve spent hours, like we had a day blocked to work on something, and we spent hours just on, “How are you?” Sometimes it’s like, “Well, I’m disappointed that I thought by now I would have this done, and I don’t.” So, there’s been these moments where you could really check in and connect with like how people really are before we work on stuff. And it’s made all the difference for our team who’s gotten us through really some tough times.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And is there a key nugget you share that tends to be quoted back to you frequently?

Liz Wiseman
It would probably be something…it would be better said than this because I think other people would probably say it better than this. It’s just like, “Be the genius-maker not the genius.” It would be some version of that.

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

Liz Wiseman
Well, I’m pretty easy to find. TheWisemanGroup.com is a little bit of information about the work that my team and I do. ImpactPlayersBook.com, MultipliersBook.com, I think RookieSmarts.com, RookieSmartsBook.com, I’m honestly sure about that one, or, like I’m @LizWiseman on Twitter.

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

Liz Wiseman
Maybe a challenge and a suggestion. The challenge would be to ask yourself, “What might I be doing with the very best of intentions that is a barrier to impact? Like, what is preventing me from doing the most valuable meaningful work?” And it’s often things that we’re doing with our best intentions.

And if someone wants to get on the path of impact, maybe a challenge to start here, which is to find out what’s important to the people that you work for, whether it’s a client, a boss, internal customers or stakeholders. Find out what’s important to them and make it important to you. And all the right things tend to flow from that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Liz, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and impact in your future endeavors.

Liz Wiseman
Thank you. It’s nice talking to you.