Tag

Relationships Archives - Page 16 of 53 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

746: How to Foster Deep Connection and Influence with Zoe Chance

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Zoe Chance shares heartwarming, powerful, and practical advice for building relationships and getting people to say yes to you.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The one thing that motivates people more than money 
  2. How to exude more warmth and likability
  3. The one question that helps you get along with anyone 

About Zoe

Zoe Chance is a writer, teacher, researcher, and climate philanthropist. She’s obsessed with the topic of interpersonal influence and her science-based book is called Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. It is being published in more than 20 languages. Zoe earned her doctorate from Harvard and now teaches the most popular course at Yale School of Management (Mastering Influence and Persuasion). Her research is published in top academic journals and covered in global media outlets. She speaks on television and around the world, and her framework for behavior change is the foundation for Google’s global food policy. Before joining academia, Zoe managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand, helped out with political campaigns, and worked in jobs like door-to-door sales and telemarketing. She lives with her family in New Haven, CT.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you Sponsors!

  • Athletic Greens. Support your health with my favorite greens supplement. Free 1-year supply of Vitamin D and 5 travel packs when you purchase from athleticgreens.com/awesome. 
  • Lexus. Check out the lovely innovations in the all-new 2022 Lexus NX at https://lexus.com/nx 

Zoe Chance Interview Transcript

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

Zoe Chance
Thank you so much, Pete. Great to meet you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you, too. You, too. I’m excited to dig into your wisdom about influence and how we can be all more awesome at our job doing that. I want to hear about one of your first jobs, cleaning audiobook covers with a toothbrush. What is the whole story here?

Zoe Chance
This was my very first job out of college. I had a degree from one of the top liberal art schools in the country, Harverford College, and I was so excited to set the world on fire but it’s actually really hard to find a job when you don’t have experience, and the job I could get hired for was working in a factory, cleaning the covers of audiobooks with a toothbrush. And the benefit of that job, the upside was that you get to listen to audiobooks, which I enjoyed, but this was one day, Pete.

And then at the end of the day, my boss says, “You know, Zoe, you did a really great job, and I bet it won’t take longer than three months or so before I can promote you up to the mailroom.” And I just left with my spirit crushed and I’m so embarrassed I ghosted them and I just never went back.

Pete Mockaitis
So, like this is one day?

Zoe Chance
Yeah. It was such an ego blow as a new college grad to be like, “Only three more months and then you can make it the lowest rung on the totem pole of the mailroom.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I’m curious to know if they’re fresh off the factory line, why are they dirty enough to need a toothbrush cleaning?

Zoe Chance
You know what, Pete, you don’t want to know. They’re not fresh. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, they’re not fresh off the line. These were rented audiobooks. So, especially people who were doing long drives, like truckers and stuff would rent and return audiobooks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you like ketchup from the fries.

Zoe Chance
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood.

Zoe Chance
Hard jobs are so much harder than like… all blue-collar jobs, and I’ve had multiple, many of them are just so much harder than all white-collar jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear that. Well, thank you for sharing. And you have gone up a few ranks since the mailroom so you’re now a top writer, teacher, researcher when it comes to influence. So, I’m curious to hear what’s one of the most surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us humans when it comes to influence over the course of your career?

Zoe Chance
I’ve had a lot of surprises. One of the most surprising is that by reading these secret journals that students keep for my class, I’ve been teaching at Yale for a decade, and I teach the most popular class, and I’ve had hundreds of students share these journals with me in which they reflect on their insights and apprehensions and experiences with influence. What I’ve learned is it doesn’t matter how successful you are, almost everyone is uncomfortable with influence.

And this is also from conversations with executives and activists and politicians, almost all of us feel uncomfortable having to advocate for ourselves, to ask for what we want, and especially in some domains more than others, and this is even some of the wealthiest people on earth, sort of the first big thing is interpersonal influence is deeply uncomfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating. Well, I was just talking to a master salesperson yesterday, Shane from a Kwame Christian’s podcast organization – shoutout – another guest on the show, and it’s so funny because I sure get the impression, he loves…he just eats up the interpersonal influence, and I don’t know maybe he’s the exception, you said almost everyone. Or, is it that those who love it are also uncomfortable with it, kind of like the nerves of public speaking and the thrill of the chase at the same time?

Zoe Chance
What I found is that most people, even if their whole job is influence, interpersonal influence, maybe they work in sales or lobbying or fundraising and are very successful at it and they love their job, but maybe it’s their daughter that they’re having conflict with and they feel really uncomfortable asking her to do her homework, clean the dishes, something like that. Or, it might be they’re uncomfortable…

I was talking to someone who is so wealthy, that he’s on lists of wealthy people, just last week, who was saying that in business it’s easy for him to ask, but when he goes to a restaurant, he would never send his food back because that makes him uncomfortable to create extra work for the people who are working at the restaurant. Many of us have comfort in work-type of domains but we’re uncomfortable in romantic situations. It’s hard for us to make a pass at someone or request something from our partner, things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is intriguing. And, in some ways, I could think about if this wealthy person happened to be like a CEO-ish type role being a steward of the shareholders’ money, basically, is kind of like what you’re doing there, you can sort of feel emboldened. I’m just totally projecting into the role of a CEO, I don’t know.

Zoe Chance
I love it. Keep going. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll just speculate away. You can feel emboldened, like, “Well, hey, this is kind of like my duty. I’ll do the best I can for my shareholders and for my team whose bonuses are all tied into the share price, but sending my food back, I mean, that’s just for me. Like, I’m going to make their job harder just so that I can eat something a little tastier. Like, who do I think I am? Come on.”

Zoe Chance
Yeah, I think that you’re absolutely right, and I didn’t mean to be weird or secretive. So, the guy is Ed Mylett, who’s a motivational speaker and an entrepreneur. And I’m absolutely certain that what you’re saying about CEOs applies to most people where it’s easier for us to advocate for ourselves when what we’re doing is benefiting others. That’s what you’re saying overall, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And what he was saying, Ed was saying that he was uncomfortable in a situation where there’s no reciprocity and he can’t repay someone. So, in a business context, often we can say, like, “Hey, could you do this thing for me and I can do this thing for you?” But he’s saying, “What could I possibly do for the waiter? Or, definitely maybe I can tip them. What can I possibly do for the chef that has to remake the meal? Nothing, so I’m uncomfortable asking for that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Okay.

Zoe Chance
Well, can I ask you, Pete, if there’s some…and, obviously, you don’t have to tell us, but is there some area of your life that’s uncomfortable to advocate for yourself in?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. You know, it’s so funny, I feel…I hope none of my landlords are listening to this. We’re temporarily renting as we moved to Tennessee less than a year ago and we’re getting our bearings, and I also have an office space that I’m renting. And I’ve been on both sides of the equation in terms of as a tenant and a landlord, and I know, as a landlord, not that I lash out viciously at anybody, but as a landlord, I think of my investment in the property the same way as I think of my investment in like mutual funds or other things that are completely passive.

And so, as a result, every time a tenant has a request, which is totally fair and normal and reasonable and should be dealt with, I’m kind of irritated. And it’s not their fault, it’s my fault for, I guess, being selfish or just looking at it a little differently, like, “Hey, Pete, real estate is a little bit different than a mutual fund, so re-align your expectations or get your property manager to do more of the heavier lifting instead of bouncing these things to me.”

So, anyway, given that, when I’m a tenant and there’s something that’s a little off, like, “Oh, there are some ants here,” and it’s sort of like, “Well, I don’t want to inconvenience them about the ants.” And maybe it’s my fault because I should’ve done a better job of cleaning up my crumbs. There weren’t very many crumbs but there’s more than zero, and so I guess I’m at least partially to blame for these ants so I really don’t want to be like, “Hey, so take care of the ants.”

And I don’t know what I fear. Is it that they’ll be like, “Well, hey, stop being a slob with your food then we wouldn’t have an ant problem,” or, “Are you seriously inconveniencing me with your ant business? Like, don’t be a whiny little baby and smash the ants like a man”? I don’t know. But I am uncomfortable advocating for myself as a tenant to a landlord unless it’s really like, “Hey, straight up, your pipe is frozen and you need to know about that, so that’s what’s going on.”

Zoe Chance
That’s an amazing example. And just about anybody listening can relate to that on at least one side of the equation. And, yeah, it’s just so deeply human that we just don’t want to inconvenience each other, and also, frankly, we don’t want to be inconvenienced. But the frame of, “I think of my investment in rental property as like an investment in a mutual fund even though I am not a landlord” just makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Well, now you got me curious, how about yourself?

Zoe Chance
Oh, gosh, I was so uncomfortable asking for blurbs for this book that I’ve just written, and the person I was most scared to ask, I was scared to ask everyone because you are asking these incredibly successful people you admire to not just write something down for you and give you their super valuable social capital, but you’re implying that they should read this book that will take like 10 hours of their life for free. And, oh, my God, the person I was most scared to ask was Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, “That’s Luke Skywalker, yeah.”

Zoe Chance
Luke Skywalker, and it was so hard to get the opportunity to ask him, and I got to have a half-hour Zoom call with Mark Hamill. And on this Zoom call, he doesn’t know why we’re having a Zoom call and he’s telling these amazing stories, and I’m so scared to ask that it gets to the half an hour and I literally haven’t said anything. He’s just been telling incredible stories and doing voices of like, oh, my gosh, he did Han Solo and The Joker. He’s a voice artist. And I was so scared, I haven’t said anything.

He was nice enough to stay on. I finally did ask him, and he very gently didn’t say yes, so I don’t have a blurb from Mark Hamill. But I think there was this just deep shame in asking for the most valuable thing from the people I most admire in the world, to ask them for so much time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so cool. Well, now I’m so curious, how did you get Mark Hamill to agree to spend a half hour with you?

Zoe Chance
So, I used every single social tie that I had, and the best thing that I had come up with so far was a friend who was the therapy client of Mark Hamill’s brother, but I was very uncomfortable using that. And then, actually, Mark Hamill posted a tweet. He’s an amazing tweeter and everyone should follow him even if you don’t like Star Wars. He posted a tweet saying that he was doing a charity auction for a Zoom call and it happened to be for my alma mater, USC, where I went to school, and they had given me a scholarship.

And I hadn’t actually ever donated money to USC so I ended up making sure that I won the charity auction and I gave $4,000 to USC for their scholarship fund so that I could have the Zoom meeting with Mark Hamill. And can I just share something that’s unrelated to this but my book?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it, yeah.

Zoe Chance
So, in my book, one of the messages that I talk about in the negotiation chapter is the idea of value-creation through three specific questions. And I know your listeners want to have tactical advice so this is a mindset of “How can I create value and long-term, lasting relationships that are fruitful on all sides?” So, a negotiation is just a conversation that leads to something more than whatever was on the table. It’s not just yes or no. There’s nothing complicated about a negotiation but most people don’t think of opportunities for negotiating because it’s just, “Do you want to do this thing, yes or no?”

So, the three value-creation questions, listeners, are, number one, “How could the situation be even better for me?” Number two, “How could it be even better for them?” And, number three, “Who else could benefit?” So, I have this opportunity to get to speak with Mark Hamill, and, already, so he’s one of my heroes. I’ve idolized him since I was three years old, and the movie came out, and it was my first movie. He’s been my hero. So, just getting to have this time is just beyond a dream come true. I’m going to ask him for a book blurb. We’ll see if that works.

I also want to see, “How could this be even better for Mark than me just showing up, random person, that he gets to talk to?” That’s not so exciting. So, I reached out on Twitter and to my Facebook friends, and said, “Hey, I have this opportunity to meet with Mark Hamill. I’m going to bring one person with me and, also, I want to bring him a video love letter. So, anyone who wants to send a 10-second clip of your message to Mark Hamill. He doesn’t respond to DMs, he’s very hard to reach, but we can send him a collective love letter.”

So, I curated this video of a whole bunch of short clips of people from all over the world sending love to Mark Hamill, just to have this be a more fun experience for him. And his wife was on the call, and she came and she watched it. It was so sweet. They loved it. And it was very hard to choose someone to bring with me but I ended up deciding, like kind of almost at the last minute, to bring a hero of mine, named Cass Sunstein who’s a behavioral researcher, who’s written a book called The World According to Star Wars.

I had never met Cass, and he posted on Twitter a link about his book and he tagged Mark Hamill. And I just reached out and I was, “Hey, Cass, I’m Zoe. I’m a big fan of your work. Have you ever met Mark Hamill?” He says no but he’s met George Lucas. And I said, “Would you like to?” So, I brought Cass Sunstein on this call with me, and he was working in the White House at the time on the Homeland Security team and another team doing creating awesomeness for Joe Biden.

So, Mark Hamill will be excited to get to meet Cass who’s written a whole book about him, and he’s coming in from the White House. Cass is excited to get to meet Mark Hamill. A whole bunch of us are excited to get to share our love with Mark Hamill, and his wife gets to come and see this beautiful montage that I’ve created. This didn’t come to the sort of tactically successful conclusion that I was dreaming of, of Mark saying yes to blurbing my book, although he said, “Send it to me and I’ll think about it,” and then he just politely ghosted me. It’s okay, Mark, I totally forgive you.

But it was such a win-win situation for everybody. It was fun, it was an honor, I got to actually now make friends with Cass Sunstein and we’re doing two events together next month, and it’s just great. So, I set up the situation so that it couldn’t fail. Whether Mark said yes or no, there was no possibility of failure. And I also had a lot of fun.

So, the value-creation question is to reinforce, “How could it be better for me?” I got to meet Cass. “How could it be better for them?” Mark gets to meet Cass and get this love letter. And, “How could it benefit other people?” It benefits Cass and the rest of everyone who contributed. So, that’s just one example of how we can create collaborative deals rather than trying to claim all of this value, and just use each other to tactically get what we want.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And the notion of “How can it be better for others?” is cool in that it just makes it more fun and feel good both for you and for them in terms of, “Okay, yeah, and your customers are going to like this even more,” or, “And the readers of the blog or the podcast or whatever will dig it.” And so that just feels good in terms of not only are third parties being enriched, and, hey, that’s cool for them. It’s also, I think, really does good for your relationship there. It’s like, “Hey, we have partnered and collaborated to do something good for people,” and that just releases all kinds of feel-good, I don’t know, neurotransmitters, hormones in the body.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, those are really important. And the sociological thing that we’ve done is we’re moving away from transactional norms to communal norms where it’s really important in this that you’re not saying, “I will do this great thing for you if you do this great thing for me.” That’s another thing that’s fine. We can do that in deal-making, and we do, but to shift to the dopamine, oxytocin, great neurotransmitter situation where you have a relationship with this person where we’re not beam counting and horse trading is to just say, “Hey, how could I make this better for you?”

And there are some things that I could easily do, it’s something that you do, Pete, is posting all of these links for each of the podcast interviews that you have, and there’s no reason for you to do that but you’re just saying, “Hey, listeners can benefit from the links that I share. And all of the people who I’m linking to, they can benefit too. So, why would I not do that?” But a lot of people don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s true. It does take more work but I guess I just always think about myself in the listener’s shoes, like, “I want that thing but I don’t know where to find that thing.” And I’ve had multiple experiences of hearing something on a podcast, like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And so, I Google it for 20 minutes, and it’s like, “I got nothing. I want to know more about that thing but it’s nowhere to be found so I guess I’m done.” It’s rare that I’d have the gumption to be like, “Hey, podcaster, you said this thing and I need it.” Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Zoe Chance
And you’re making it easy for them to get that. And I have a whole chapter, well, half chapter, in my book about ease, because ease is the most powerful force of influence. If there’s only one thing that you take away, listeners, to this episode that you might do differently in your life is make it as easy as possible for the other person to follow through on whatever it is that you’re requesting or inviting them to do. Ease is more influential than motivation or price or quality or satisfaction.

And for nerds, there’s a metric that you can look up and maybe, Pete, you’ll link it here, there are Harvard cases and stuff that you can look at. Actually, for the link, there’s a book called The Effortless Experience, which is for real nerds.

Pete Mockaitis
Nice name.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, it’s great. And the metric is called the customer effort score. It’s basically a question that says, “How easy was it for you to do that thing that you wanted to do?” that one metric explains 30% of word of mouth and 30% of willingness to continue to do business with the company.

For customers who say it was very difficult to do the thing they wanted to do, there’s an 80% chance they’ll spread negative word of mouth. For customers who say it was very easy to do what they wanted to do, there is only a 1% chance that they will spread negative word of mouth, and that’s independent of the actual outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
That really resonates because I was refinancing a mortgage and I found a really great rate and I was excited about it. But then, oh, my gosh, this took maybe three months to get done and I kind of prompted him a few times and that really got him off there off their butts it seems, I said, “Hey, you know what, I just met a dude, Justin, like him a lot, he does mortgages. I think he’s hustling, I think he’s actually going to get this done, so I’m going to kind of switch over.” Like, “No, no, don’t, please. No.” So, that kind of got him into gear.

And so, even though I got my great rate and it’s working, I don’t feel great about them, and I have said bad things, it’s like, “Hey, man, I got a great price but they were really obnoxious, so I guess it was worth it, time, money, swap, but it wasn’t fun.”

Zoe Chance
You know what, Pete, so I just moved last year and my refinance was so difficult that I finally just took money out of my retirement account and bought the house in cash.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Zoe Chance
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Zoe Chance
That’s how deeply I feel your pain.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that is potent and you get to that point, and I got to that point a few times, just like, “Just forget it.” And I always say, “Okay, Pete, let’s take a look. It’s been frustrating but just how many hours have you spent and how many more hours could you possibly have to spend, okay? And how many dollars are we saving? That’s a great ratio, Pete. That’s better than just about anything else you do in your business so, like, take another step forward and keep it going.” But I had to like coax myself multiple times to not just throw my hands in the air.

Zoe Chance
Right. You did the right thing. I did the stupid thing where I was just so angry, I couldn’t spend any more time on the refinance, and I’ve no idea how many thousands of dollars that ended up costing me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I appreciate your humility and your willingness to share. Well, so, ease, that’s a huge takeaway. Your book, it’s called Influence Is Your Superpower, we’ve already gotten a couple delightful nuggets. Is there sort of a core theme or big idea associated with the book you want to make sure to put out there?

Zoe Chance
The big idea of the book is that, in addition to make it as easy as possible, so if you just had one takeaway, it’s that. The big idea of the book is that what our goal should be in influencing other human beings is that they want to say yes to us. Our goal should not be that we get the thing that we’re asking for, that’s a short-term win, and the long-term win is that they want to say yes to us. They may not be able to, it might not happen, we might not get that thing in this moment that we want, but we’re building long-term relationships that are much more valuable over time. And I tell loads of stories about that.

The fear that we have about asking is that we will be making people uncomfortable and they won’t want to say yes to us, but when you have a good relationship with somebody, they want to say yes to you even if you’re asking them to come and deal with the ants or whatever that is. And you know that from the people that you have relationships with.

So, to make this practical, something that you can put into action, just focus, keenly, keenly, keenly on expressing warmth before you focus on anything else. The way our brains are designed, we have judgments of each other on two dimensions, which are warmth and competence. The warmth judgments happen first, they’re more powerful, and they’re stickier. This is especially important for us right now because we don’t get to spend as much time in face-to-face interactions when it’s easier to be expressing and perceiving warmth.

It’s actually hard not to like somebody that we’re spending time with if they’re being friendly to us, but, say, when we’re writing messages to each other, people tend to read less warmth than we intended into our written messages and they read more aggression or rank or insults than we intend. So, when we’re writing, especially we need to be very, very intentional about expressing warmth in our messages. It’s a good idea on all of our communications though.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. Well, these are some big ideas that are hugely doable. And, Zoe, you do a great job of expressing warmth, and it’s interesting, because we were chatting just a few minutes before I pushed record. And it’s funny, I just thought, “Oh, well, she’s just so wonderful, wonderfully delightfully warm person.” That’s just who you are in your personality.

Zoe Chance
I am.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you got that going for sure, so you got that going for you. But, now, you got me wondering, like, “Hmm, so is this something that you’ve studied and practiced and mastered?” So, this is learnable. How do we do that?

Zoe Chance
Yeah, so it is absolutely sincere and it absolutely didn’t come naturally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Zoe Chance
I was so shy and nerdy as a child. I couldn’t communicate with anybody and that’s why I got interested in our whole field of communication. I had a theory that my voice was the same timbre as the ambient sounds of the universe, and that’s why people spoke over me and couldn’t hear me when I talked. That’s how nerdy I was.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I was thinking the totally opposite, “Thus, you have tremendous power.”

Zoe Chance
Oh, no. People literally couldn’t hear it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Ambient like you’re just ignorable because it blends into everything else. Okay.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, exactly, just background noise. And so, I liked people but I didn’t know that you actually need to express your liking to people. I thought it was enough to just feel my liking of people. And it was through acting training and learning to emote and to express emotions that I was able to train myself to express the warm feelings that I do have in my heart.

Also, though, I’ve trained myself to like people more than I used to just naturally because I wasn’t thinking of it. You’re not always…just there are lots of things you’re doing in the world besides liking people. But when I was a teenager, my mom’s friend, Eileen, was married to a diplomat, and I wanted to be Eileen because she was so cool, and she threw great parties, she went to all these parties, she had cool clothes and jewelry, and her husband, the diplomat, knew how to drive like James Bond because, I guess, they train you to do that if you’re an ambassador.

Pete Mockaitis
Just in case you need it.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, you have to. So, they were the coolest people in our life. And, Eileen, I think I was like 13, and she said, “Zoe, all you need to do to succeed in life is learn how to find one thing to like about each person that you talk to.” And she had to deal with some very difficult, difficult to like people, and she said, “The way you do it is by asking them questions. And then if you can’t find something to like by asking them questions, you just look at them, and even if it’s just their earrings, you like that.”

So, what happens when you’re looking around in a world at the people that you’re interacting with, and you’re looking for things to like, is that you become very curious about them, you get to know them more deeply, and it’s this incredibly fun and pleasurable way to live where you’re just noticing and appreciating all these wonderful things about people.

So, again, it’s absolutely sincere. I’m not conscious of…actually, I’m really not very conscious of expressing warmth now, and I’m really not conscious unless it’s a difficult situation of trying to find something to like. I just get to do these things habitually, and that’s really important about all these things that I’m teaching in my book about influence, that it’s work to practice new skills but any new skill, through practice, becomes habitual, and then it becomes effortless.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so much there. So, we’re looking for something to like, and then, as sort of a mindset and an ongoing process, okay.

Zoe Chance
And then expressing warmth so that they know that you like them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And so, for looking for something to like, are there any key…? Well, one thing, it’s nice when you have a goal, “Okay, I’m looking for one thing,” so it’s not overwhelming. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t.” It’s like, “You can find one thing, okay.” And then you can default to a surface-level appearance-y thing if you have to, like earrings. Tell me, are there particular super questions that tend to surface stuff that you like? Or, I guess, does this often follow any predictable patterns?

Zoe Chance
There’s a really deep question that you can ask and if they will have the conversation with you, almost guaranteed that you’ll like them no matter what. And this is from my close friend, Lalin Anik’s TED Talk, and the question is, “What’s in your heart?” It’s impossible not to like someone who answers that question for you.

That’s not the first question, usually, that you ask people, but she, actually, in her TED Talk, shows a video where she just went on a street and she just asked strangers, “What’s in your heart?” and they shared it with her. So, it really is a question that you can ask of a stranger on the airplane if you’re actually flying these days. It’s a question that you can ask in a difficult conversation or an argument that can shift the course of the argument. This is my favorite question.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And I guess that can…that really has a lot of different flavors based on the context in terms of like “What’s in your heart?” As we’re talking now, what’s in my heart is I just want people to have the thrill of discovering some powerful knowledge they can use to make their experience of life and work all the more enjoyable, both from results that they’re creating, like, “Ooh, yeah, look at that thing I did,” as well as from just the pure fun and pleasure of doing so over the limited hours we have on this planet.

Zoe Chance
Pete, I felt that so deeply that I got actually tears in my eyes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, I’ve never met anyone that I didn’t like even more, even if I already like them if you asked them that question. So, anyone listening, what if you’re at the dinner table next time or a meeting with your team, and you just ask that question, “What’s in your heart?” It’s so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Zoe, if I may, what’s in your heart?

Zoe Chance
I’m feeling so surprised and so grateful to be having such a deep conversation with you right now. I was imagining that we’d be mostly focusing on very specific practical stuff that I’m happy to talk about always, but this is…yeah, it’s next level and I’m full of gratitude.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, shucks. Well, thank you. This feels very happy. And I think, though, those principles associated with expressing warmth, finding what’s something that you like, and then making things easy, are specifically and hugely valuable. And then there’s also very many different ways they can manifest and particulars.
Well, let’s dig into the ease a little bit. Can you tell us either do you have a specific checklist or series of tactics on how to make things easier or a cool story that illustrates a number of ways we can boost ease?

Zoe Chance
I have just a really simple example to give everybody the idea that you don’t have to make these things complicated, although what you’re focusing on is making it easy for the other person. And now that we’re talking about all these, I’m focusing on the lowest-hanging fruit here, and if you end up reading the book, you’ll see tons of strategies for more complicated things, like developing charisma, and negotiating, and stuff like that.

But for ease, I had a guy named Conor, who was in a workshop that I taught, who runs a speaker series, it’s a speaking business in Ireland, and he heard me say, “Make it as easy as possible.” Do you know someone named Conor who does…?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve met a Conor who’s from Ireland who has a speaking business.

Zoe Chance
Do you remember his last name?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve seen him speak like twice. He talked about, “Give it some gab, goals, attitudes, and behaviors, and beliefs.” I don’t know if that’s the same guy.

Zoe Chance
So, this Conor’s group, I think it’s called The Executive Institute but I have to look all of this up. So, anyway, Conor – love you – he went back to his team, and he said, “Listen, the way that our business makes a profit is to have attendees become repeat attendees, and we need to make it as easy as possible for them to come back. And what we’re doing so far is email outreach, just like everyone does, and we make the announcement and everything, we give them flyers, and then follow up by email.”

But he said, “How about this? Let’s put a flyer in everyone’s chair that just has checkboxes where you can check which talks you would like to come back to, and then we follow up by email to say, ‘Hey, you said you wanted to do this talk.’” And so, making that first step of expressing interest as easy as, “Just check the box and then drop the paper off,” they increased their profits that year from this one intervention by 11% for their company.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, with dropping some papers on seats, I mean, that’s huge. And I’m thinking about church, there’s this in Catholic churches in the US, there’s something called the Annual Diocesan Appeal in which the diocese, the grouping in a city or wherever, appeals to all the individual churches, saying, “Hey, support this stuff that helps the multiple churches and programs across the whole region.”

And so, it’s interesting, like I’ve seen it done so many different ways, where you say, “Hey, you’re asking for money, to make a commitment,” and I found, I don’t have the data at hand, but it’s just massively different in terms of if you just say, “Hey, you know, there are some envelopes over there, you can grab them on your way out or on the sides of the chairs and pews, and fill them out,” versus there’s one in every row, and, “I’m now going to walk you through what’s on the envelope.”

And, of course, it’s annoying for all of us and we don’t want to spend our time doing that, but effective in terms of it is unignorable, like, “Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll remember and I’ll get to that.” It’s like, “No, no, I’m making a decision now. I choose to give money or I choose not to give money now, and there’s no kind of, ‘Yeah, maybe later-ish.’” It’s forcing that, and I’ve heard that it’s striking, the results, in terms of what that does.

And now I’m thinking about apps and how I really love it, and it’s, frankly, maybe just laziness and toddlers and distractions, I really love it when I don’t have to enter an email address or a password to get going on an app versus it just goes. I like that a lot.

Zoe Chance
Yeah, and absolutely you use those apps more. Duolingo did studies to understand what’s the perfect level of effort to keep people engaged in learning the languages that they want to learn, and they published something that, essentially, said, the least effort possible. So, make it as easy as possible, and then people will come back. They thought that people wanted a challenge because we’re trying to learn something, and they found out, “Nope, just make it as easy as possible, the best thing you can do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I would imagine, once again me speculating on their behalf, you want it as easy as possible, but you also want to feel some progress. Like, if you made it super easy, like, “Oh, I tapped ‘Oui’ and ‘Bonjour’ 30 times. Okay, I haven’t actually learned anything but that was super easy.”

Zoe Chance
Yeah, they give you that sense of progress, they also make it fun. There are some little unexpected things that pop up. Yeah, they do a lot really, really well. So, something super weird that has nothing to do with our conversation except that it’s about Duolingo is that I just learned that when the Squid Game came out and got super popular on Netflix, Netflix was having such a big cultural impact with this one show that Duolingo’s request for Korean went up by 40%.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog.

Zoe Chance
Isn’t that so cool?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s wild.

Zoe Chance
And because it’s so easy to learn a language on Duolingo, that’s where everybody went.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. I feel like I should take a second look at Duolingo. It’s great stuff. Well, Zoe, this is so much fun, but tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear quickly about a few of your favorite things?

Zoe Chance
Yeah, one of the things that I encourage you to do, especially because you’re – this is to listeners – someone who listens to shows like this, as I do, trying to better yourself and improve yourself and succeed, you create so much work and so much burdens in your self-improvement that I challenge you, if you’re up for it, to do 24 hours of no.

The 24-hour no challenge is to say no to every single person who asks you for something for the next 24 hours. And it could be small, it could be big, professional, personal, maybe you want to say yes, maybe you don’t. The caveat is don’t ruin your life. So, if you’ve got a dream job offer, or your sweetie proposes to you, don’t be like, “No!”

And you can change your mind. You have the right to change your mind always, just like everyone does, but experience what it feels like to say no, and experience what it feels like to see how they react. And then if you want to then or later, next day, a year from now, you can change your mind. This simple challenge can be life changing and thousands of people that I’ve taught have found it life changing. And I don’t even want to give the takeaways because it’s something that you have to experience for yourself. So, whatever you think it will be like, I predict that you’ll have some surprises.

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

Zoe Chance
My favorite, favorite quote is from Pauli Murray. She’s an American feminist, black, lawyer, legal scholar, she wrote arguments for Brown versus the Board of Education, and yet, she faced such racism that even after doing that, she couldn’t get a legal job, and she worked as a typist for a white feminist Betty Friedan.

Pauli Murray said, “When my brothers draw a line to keep me out, I just draw a bigger circle to keep them in.” To me, this is the perfect description of what inclusivity means and how hard it is.

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

Zoe Chance
My favorite study, I really hope is true. We’ve talked about replications and this was just published in a book not in an academic journal, but it’s a study by Richard Wiseman who’s a psychologist in the UK who wrote a great book called The Luck Factor. What he did was recruit people who said they were really, really lucky, and people who said they were really, really unlucky, but it was in a long survey, and I had no idea why he was recruiting them.

He brings them to the lab, and he’s trying to study how does luck happen. When they come to the lab, he gives them a section of a newspaper, and says, “Count the photographs and then tell me how many there are.” So, the unlucky people look through the section of the newspaper, they count the photographs, and they come back and they say, “There are 16 photographs.” “Okay, great” and they move onto the next part of the study.

The lucky people who told him they were really lucky noticed the half-page ad in the section of the newspaper that says, “Mention this ad to the experimenter for a chance to win £500.” They were luckier. They were right when they said that they were luckier people. But my interpretation, at least, it’s not that God was making them luckier, but they were more open to opportunities around them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is so good. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Zoe Chance
My favorite book is called Love Does, it’s by Bob Goff. This is a Christian book, but when I first read it, I was not religious at all. And so, if you’re not Christian, I don’t think you’ll find it annoying. Bob Goff is the most audacious and inspiring asker I’ve ever come across. And for anyone who reads that book, go to the chapter called “The Interviews” and it will blow your mind.

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

Zoe Chance
I love my reMarkable tablet that I’ve been taking notes in during this conversation. I’m an absent-minded professor, and I use all these notebooks and papers, and lose my stuff, but I don’t lose it anymore, and I feel lost without it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do to become awesome at your job?

Zoe Chance
When I’m writing, I need to clear my mind before writing, and I’ve developed a technique that I call “My Nietzsche Journal.” Nietzsche, the philosopher, said that the purpose of being human is to become someone who does not deny, so to rid ourselves of self-deception. And when I’m sitting down to clear my mind, I just write a whole page of one-line prompts that start, “I do not deny. I do not deny. I do not deny,” and I just get all the stuff, all the junk, out of my brain.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget that you share that people quote you on often?

Zoe Chance
Probably the ease one, that the bedrock principle of influence is that people tend to follow the path of least resistance.

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

Zoe Chance
Please come on over to my website www.ZoeChance.com. That’s Z-O-E-C-H-A-N-C-E.com. And there’s book, newsletter, other fun stuff, and silly stories and things like that. I would love to be friends.

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

Zoe Chance
I think I’ll just double-down on the 24 hours of no challenge but I gave them already because I don’t want to be heaping up more homework on them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Zoe, this has been a delight. Thank you. I wish you much luck with your book Influence Is Your Superpower and all of your adventures.

Zoe Chance
Thank you so much. And I look forward to following your podcast so I can be more awesome at my job.

745: How to Handle Bad Bosses and Toxic Coworkers with Tessa West

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Tessa West addresses the seven common types of jerks at work–and how to deal with them effectively.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to tell if someone is being an intentional jerk at work 
  2. How to identify your particular type of work jerk 
  3. How to tell if you’re the jerk at work

About Tessa

Tessa West is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University, where she is a leading expert on interpersonal interaction and communication. She has published over 60 articles in the field of psychology’s most prestigious journals, and has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She writes regularly about her research in the Wall Street Journal. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank you Sponsors!

  • University of California Irvine. Chart your course to career success at ce.uci.edu/learnnow 

Tessa West Interview Transcript

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

Tessa West
Thanks for having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into your wisdom. It’s a frequently-requested topic, difficult bosses and jerks and, “What do we do with them?” So, maybe we can kick it off by you sharing one of the most ludicrous, hilarious, ridiculous examples you’ve encountered, either directly or through people who want to tell you their story, about a jerk at work?

Tessa West
Oh, yeah, I hear a lot of stories. I actually probably hear more, lately, stories of people who really humiliated themselves in an effort to confront a jerk, you know, crying publicly, that kind of thing. So, probably one of the craziest things I’ve encountered, I’ve encountered lots of jerks, and I’ll tell one of those stories in a moment.

But the craziest thing I’ve ever encountered was I was actually giving a talk, I was giving a keynote somewhere, and it was a whole bunch of powerful people in the room, C-suite for a huge Fortune 500 company, and we’re all going around the room and talking about our goals and listening and all this kind of stuff.

And, all of a sudden, one of the women at the table, one of the roundtables, just started bawling, and she stood up and she grabbed the mic, and she had this whole like speaker truth moment in front of all of her coworkers where she just lambasted them for ignoring her, disrespecting her, stealing credit, basically taking over her, talking over her in meetings, cutting her out of email chains, and stood up there like snot dripping down her face, tears coming out, holding the mic, and just went off on this crazy speech.

And, at some point, the president of the company just stood up and said, “For God’s sake, can someone grab her a box of Kleenex?” and it really destroyed the mood and made it really uncomfortable. And I thought to myself, “This is what happens when we let our jerks at work take over for so long and we don’t confront, and then we just explode on them in these really inopportune awkward situations.”

So, that was kind of one setting where I was just surprised at what happens when people feel like they’re targets of jerks and they don’t actually do anything about it. It just kind of happens like that. Terrible, terrible moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Whoa. Well, did you ever get to find out how things unfolded in the weeks and months afterwards?

Tessa West
Well, I talked to her in the bathroom afterwards. It was very high school. It felt like high school. I went up to her, and I ran into her in the bathroom, and the problem was she couldn’t show her face like in the intermission. She felt so uncomfortable. But, yeah, I did follow up with her and she felt like it sort of helped break the ice to have these conversations.

But, at that point, things had gone so far that she didn’t feel like they could really be remedied. She felt like she had to leave her job, which was crazy because she held this really high-up position in the company, and she just felt like, at that point, no one respected her. Now, they thought she was super histrionic and dramatic so there’s no kind of saving the moment for her.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that is a dramatic story and I think it really is a nice cautionary tale in terms of, this is what can happen if you let things get out of control, even though you may very well, legitimately, be the victim and not at all to blame. If you sort of continue taking it long enough, this might be in your future or other negative outcomes.

Tessa West
Definitely, you don’t want this in your future but it’s possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. All right. Well, that’s a powerful story to tee this up. Thank you. So, yeah, we’re going to talk about jerks at work. Maybe, could you share perhaps one of the most surprising or most counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made when it comes to your research on the area?

Tessa West
Yeah, I think when most people think about jerks at work, the first question they have is, “How do I confront a jerk at work?” And I actually find in our research that, probably 50% of the time, confronting that person is not a good idea or at least it’s not a good first step, that you need to do lots of other things before you’re ready to confront someone, like collecting data, and finding how why it’s part of the problem, and whether you’re the only victim, and all these kinds of things.

But I also think people are always surprised when I tell them that when you confront someone, you have to think about it like you would confronting your spouse or your child about something they’re doing that they dislike, and kind of use those same strategies – backing into the problem, opening with a compliment or things you want to see them do more of, before you actually talk about the problem behavior.

And people are surprised at that because they think to themselves, “It doesn’t feel like my job to tell someone ‘You’re great’ when they’re terrible.” And I kind of have to remind them that it kind of de-fangs the conversation a little and reduces the threat. But, also, to remind them that no one likes having their flaws spelled out to them in detail. It’s an uncomfortable experience, even people who you think deserve it.

And so, I think we have this instinct to confront, to lay out people’s flaws, to tell them how they make us feel, and I actually don’t think any of those things are good ideas when it comes to confronting jerks at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. So, you said half of the time, we shouldn’t do it at all. How do we make that determination and what should we do instead?

Tessa West
That’s a great question. I think it really depends on the kind of jerk you’re dealing with. But often, it’s the case that you might want to talk to someone about your jerk but it’s not the jerk themselves. So, one example of that would be dealing with a kiss-up-kick-downer. So, these are those people that if you work in a competitive workplace, they’re mean to everyone who works with them in the same level or beneath them, but the boss loves them because they bring some kind of talent to the team.

So, this kind of instinct to go and tell them, “Stop bullying me. I know what you’re doing,” kind of what we learned growing up in school to stand up to the bully, so to speak, often backfires because they just get more conniving and more clever in their strategies. And so, confronting them doesn’t really get you where you need to be. You need to talk to your boss about the person, and kind of there are some strategies behind that. But, actually, confronting an intentional jerk often backfires.

Another example of that is a gaslighter. So, if you’re being gaslit by a boss who’s cutting you off socially and building an alternative reality, and they’re doing it for some reason or something they’re trying to hide, going to them and saying, “I know what you’re up to. You’re gaslighting me,” is just going to make them more strategic as well, and so you really have to back out of that relationship, kind of build some protection, build a little bit of a barrier up, find allies and so forth, and get the help of other powerful people to exit that relationship but you never actually want to confront that person.

Of course, that’s not the case for all jerks. Lots of them, you actually do need to talk to. But the ones that are intentionally trying to sabotage you, confronting them and telling them that you know what they’re up to and they should stop bullying you, almost never works.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, yeah, how do we discern whether you’re dealing with an intentional jerk or an accidental jerk, like, “Oh, oops, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I did that, and I didn’t realize you hated that. Oh, geez. Excuse me. My apologies”?

Tessa West
Yeah, I think that there’s degrees of sensitivity that people have and what they express, but if you really try to understand why someone’s doing what they’re doing, that often kind of provides insight into whether they’re intentionally being a jerk. So, for example, if someone is stealing credit, you can tell if you work in a team or in an organization where everyone is just throwing ideas in the air, it’s really disorganized, and then in the end you try to grant credit.

Credit-granting and mis-granting kind of often happens in these teams. And, usually, when we’re the target of that, we feel like someone stole our credit but, often, that’s not really the case. It’s kind of part of the process of us being disorganized and people not keeping track of who said what. So, in situations where’s there’s ambiguity around behaviors, there’s lack of role clarity, we don’t really know who’s suppose to be doing what, who’s in charge of what, that’s where you often get things like free-riding and credit-stealing that might not be necessarily motivated to torture people or ruin people’s lives, but more kind of a product of the situation.

Kind of the most classic example of this is micromanagers. We often think they’re trying to torture us and they don’t trust us, but more often than not, they’re micromanaging because they’re not being managed properly because they were promoted, because they were good at your job not managing, and there’s a lack of clarity from above on what they should be doing.

So, if you kind of look at the origins of their behavior in combination with the context in which you’re working, you often get insight into just how intentional this behavior actually is and how much of it is just we work in a place where there’s such, this kind of lack of clarity about what’s going on that this kind of accidental jerkery can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s handy. And I’m sure it varies so much but I’ll try to put you on the spot nonetheless. Do you have a sense of roughly what percentage of the time when we perceive jerkery? Is it intentional versus misunderstanding, disorganization, some other factor?

Tessa West
So, is your question, “How often do we think that someone is being a jerk because of intention?”

Pete Mockaitis
I guess when we perceive, when we suspect someone is a jerk, what proportion of the time is that actually the case versus “I’m misunderstanding”?

Tessa West
Yeah, I think I’m going to answer your question in two ways. First, almost no one admits to being a jerk so no one thinks they’re being a jerk. Second, almost everyone thinks if someone is being a jerk, they’re doing it on purpose. So, we have this bias to attribute people’s terrible behaviors to their individual personalities, so we almost always think that someone is doing it intentionally. I’d say probably 50% of the time they’re not.

And, in fact, I talk about some extreme cases in my book, like the gaslighter, but those are actually fairly rare. What we usually get is kind of low-level stuff that occurs under ambiguous situations where we actually don’t know the root cause of the behavior but we assume it’s because they’re a jerk, and they’re intentionally trying to be a jerk. So, I think most of us believe that but, probably half the time, there’s not really much intention behind it. If anything, people are just completely misguided in what they think is a good idea often at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you mentioned a few of the types of jerks at work, and, in fact, you’ve got a listing of seven. So, maybe for completeness’ sake, could you give us the quick definition of each of the seven, like the name, the definition, and perhaps a quick do and don’t for each of them?

Tessa West
Sure. So, the first is the kiss-up-kick-downer, so I mentioned this one before. This person is horrible to everyone at the same level as them or beneath them but the boss loves them. And so, a do for dealing with these folks is do try to find an ally who’s a little bit outside of your immediate social network who can connect you to other victims so you can learn how widespread the problem is.

Then once you have that information, you can go to your boss to talk to them about it but we can much more convince them they should do something if they think there’s other victims. Don’t try to confront this person and tell them that you know what they’re up to and you’re going to tell on them. They know that they already have the approval of the boss and that they have the upper hand, so doing that is just going to make them even tricks-ier than they already are.

The next one is the credit stealer. So, these tend to be our friends, our confidants, sometimes even our bosses or managers, and what they do is steal credit for your ideas and for your hard work. And I think these folks are often really difficult to deal with because sometimes it’s intentional and sometimes it’s not. So, do pre-processes to help make it really clear from the onset who’s done what work so that it really kind of nips credit-stealing in the bud. Credit-stealing is borne out of bad processes. It’s not usually the product of a person who’s trying to steal credit. These people have to thrive in these situations.

Don’t accuse a credit-stealer of stealing credit. So, this is one of those examples where the minute you accuse them of credit-stealing, probably 80% of the time, they’re going to come back and say that they did more work than you realize they did because we all have a bias to think we contributed more than we actually did, so you’re just kind of in a conflict with these people if you do that.

The next is the bulldozer. So, these people tend to hold power and status at work. They talk over everyone, they’re loud, in the age of Zoom, they’re the ones whose camera takes up the whole screen, the rest of us kind of zone out when they talk, but they also go behind the scenes to kind of pull levers of power. So, if they don’t like a decision the group is making, they’ll go to the boss or the boss’ boss and kind of talk them out of siding with the group.

So, one thing that you don’t want to do is just try to trample down or stomp down on a bulldozer. What you want to do instead is redirect them. So, use that attention that they have, that loud-mouthiness, to actually echo contributions of younger people. And when you do this, it actually makes them kind of feel a little bit more included. You also have to go behind the scenes a little bit and talk to that boss and talk to the boss’ boss as a group to kind of even out the different perspectives that they’re hearing.

The next one is the free-rider. So, this is the most common type of colleague that we have. These people have charisma for days, they tend to be really well-liked, they take advantage of their social skills to get away with doing nothing on teams. And so, our tendencies to want to confront them and accuse them of free-riding and doing nothing, but like some of the other jerks at work, when you do this, what ends up happening is they’re already disengaged, now they feel shamed so they’re going to disengage even more. They’re going to pull back even more.

And I could tell you an interesting story of a free-rider I know who did this exact same thing. What you want to do instead is to re-engage them, is remind them of why you wanted them on the team in the first place. What about them did you like? Were they creative? Did they help sort of provide socially groove, whatever it is? And then get on a really clear schedule of how you’re going to get them re-engaged back in the team. So, don’t listen to things like vague platitudes, “Oh, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” You need like a week-by-week exact strategy of how they’re going to do it and what they’re going to do.

And then the next three chapters are about managers. So, micromanagers who are really common at work, these folks tend to have top-down control over everything you do no matter how small or big, and they do it equally to everybody. And so, our tendency with these people is to go to them and tell them how they make us feel, “You’re smothering me,” or that we don’t trust them. But the reality is, these usually aren’t the issues behind micromanagement.

So, instead of doing that, do have a conversation about higher-level goals, what are your goals and what are theirs, and you can kind of back into the micromanagement, but the problem is that you’re misaligned on what you should be doing at work. You want to come up with a plan of how to actually become aligned. The best way to do that is to have specific goals and then weekly check-in meetings or that 15 minutes to stay on task. A lot of us don’t want to engage more with a micromanager but that’s the best thing to do because it gives the relationship structure.

Then we have the neglectful boss. They’re kind of the opposite of the micromanagement coin. So, these folks tend to do this disappearing act for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but then they freak out and they panic that they’re out of the loop, so they show up at the last minute and then they micromanage you at the worst time. They create massive amounts of uncertainty because you don’t know when they’re going to show up.

So, our tendency for these folks is to tell them that they need to meet with us, that’s it’s an emergency, write these emails that say in all caps and bold, “URGENT. CALL. I NEED TO MEET NOW.” But, instead, what you need to do is two things. Offer to offload some of their work to kind of re-engage them. Some of the work that they’re doing you could do more efficiently. And then the other thing that you want to do with these guys is actually give them a longer period of time in which they can set up meetings with you. So, instead of 24 hours, give them two weeks because they’ll be less stressed out, they’ll be more likely to engage.

And then the gaslighter. So, these are the kind of really sinister sociopathic jerks at work who lure you in either with the promise of being a part of something special, a little bit like a cult leader, or the threat that if you don’t what they say, you’re going to get fired. And then they isolate you from everyone at work and they create an alternative reality.

So, what you don’t want to do is tell them you caught them lying, that you know what they’re up to, and what you do want to do is document everything they do, don’t have any meetings that don’t end with kind of minutes taken at the end that you send to them. You want to make sure you do those things. And then you need to build up your relationship brick by brick. The thing that they actually intentionally destroy, you have to recreate.

And then you’re going to go to your allies and actually get them to help you form connections with other people in power who can help you exit out of this relationship, but you can’t do this one alone. You absolutely have to rely on your social network at work to escape a relationship with a gaslighter.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say create an alternate reality, I imagine there’s many ways you could accomplish that. Could you give us a rich story that brings it all together?

Tessa West
Yes. So, a couple of the stories that I talk about in my book are related to idea theft. So, sometimes what happens at work is you have someone who used to be really special, who used to be kind of at the top of their game and really creative, and everything was going well for them, but then just one day, things dry up.

And so, I’ve heard this story, I’ve heard it in marketing, I’ve heard it in academia, I heard it in business, industries that require creativity, one day the boss just doesn’t have it anymore, and they panic and they don’t know what to do. And so, what they end up doing, or at least in the examples I talk about, is they start stealing ideas from other people.

They start downloading documents on shared Google Drives. The idea theft kind of starts out small with maybe a little suggestion of what to do that they haven’t thought of, and over time, they have completely built this reality of coming up with something new and novel that they really just stole from another person.

And, in the example I talk about in the book, the person who’s on the receiving end of this gaslighting believes that their manager or their boss has put together this new creative project, this kind of groundbreaking marketing plan and, in reality, it was all stolen. But the gaslighter had to create a whole bunch of lies so that person wouldn’t detect the stealing. They wouldn’t know that Google accounts were hacked and that kind of thing. And the way they do that is they make sure they don’t talk with these other people who are actually coming up with these ideas. They’re totally isolated from kind of the creative energy of the team and then they’re able to get away with it.

In academia, this has happened a bunch, and in science where people make up data. A couple professors have gone down pretty hard for not just making up data but making up staff that ran the data…

Pete Mockaitis
Like, whole persons. Like, inventing names and…

Tessa West
…fake people who collect these, all this crazy stuff. But you had to be gaslit to really even believe any of these crazy kinds of alternative lab world with fake employees and fake data, and the only way that they accomplish this, down to like fake names, fake interviews, fake pictures, is because they never actually interacted with anyone at work that would tell them, “That’s not a real person. No one has ever seen them around.” So, it takes quite a lot to have fake employees and fake ideas and all of this kind of stuff. It takes really having no interaction with other people who could ever fact-check that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, yeah, that’s intriguing. And so, that’s an alternative reality alright with all sorts of details and inventions. Okay. And you said you had a free-rider story as well. Do tell.

Tessa West
Yes, so kind of the one lesson I’ve learned about calling out free-riders is these individuals tend to be very socially sensitive. They get away with free-riding because they’re well-liked and they can make good dinner reservations and they know all the gossip. So, what happened in my situation was we called out a free-rider, told this person we knew they weren’t doing anything, thought because they were socially motivated and cared what we thought that would get them to re-engage, but it was just the opposite.

And he felt so uncomfortable in meetings that what he did was he set his cell phone to ring, to pretend ring, at the last 10 minutes of the meeting so that he could exit the room before everybody else did so he didn’t have to talk to anyone. But it was the sound on an Apple iPhone of the alarm so we all knew it wasn’t a real ring. It was just the alarm going off, but he would pick up his phone when the ring went off, and say, “Hello? Oh, I’m sorry, everyone. I have to leave a few minutes early,” and leave so that he didn’t have to interact with us.

And I kind of realized later that that was kind of motivated by this extreme discomfort with hanging around too long with team members that had kind of shamed him for doing nothing, and it backfired. It was really hard to re-engage him once we had done that. He had pretend phone rings going off so he didn’t have to talk to us.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And so then, the better plan is to get a very specific gameplan in terms of, “These are your tasks over the next few weeks that you’re going to be owning,” and then it’s kind of like black and white there.

Tessa West
I think it’s black and white. I think the first step is to re-engage them by saying, “We miss you so much. These were all the great things that you brought to the team,” even if it pains you in your role and your rolling your eyes the whole time, kind of reminding them why you liked them, really helps kind of get over that hump, and it helps them with that shame feeling of being called out.

There’s this great research on free-riders showing that even if you show them evidence of their free-riding, they almost never admit it. And so, this is something that just people don’t ‘fess up to. So, actually, you don’t want to end up in this debate with them over whether they did it or not, how bad of a person they are or a team member. You really just want to talk about, “What we’re going to do moving forward, but also what we want to see more of out of you, what we really like, and wish that we had more. We miss that kind of thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I’m thinking about some free-riding experiences, and it was kind of odd that it’s sort of like there is incontrovertible evidence, like, “So, in your timesheet, you marked this amount of time, and, yet, here we see in the Skype notes how long this meeting actually took with me, and yours is much longer.” It was really weird actually.

Tessa West
Yeah, it’s really disconcerting when someone won’t admit to something that’s so obvious. It’s like they’re five years old and their face is covered in like brownie batter, and they’re like, “I didn’t eat the brownies.”

Pete Mockaitis
And let’s talk about just that concept. I’ve got a buddy, and we’ve talked about this a few times in terms of, I don’t know what the construct is. Is it humility, self-confidence, something? But in terms of like I have enough humility to know that I’m wrong. I make mistakes. I misperceive things. And I often realize that there are multiple sides to each story, etc.

And, yet, so if someone comes out confidently saying something that doesn’t seem quite right to me, I can be like, “Well, that doesn’t quite seem to check out but, boy, they seem so confident about that.” Like, I tend to just almost fall for it. And then, I remember once I was having a steak dinner, and I thought, “This is weird. This doesn’t taste very good.” And I love steak and the restaurant seemed expensive enough such that it should be good. And I thought, “Huh, so there must be something wrong with my sense of taste or smell. Maybe I’ve got COVID again.”

Tessa West
Again.

Pete Mockaitis
And then I thought, “Well.” And I said, “Well, that’s interesting, Pete.” Like, I’m here talking to myself internally, like you question your very ability to perceive things rather than…I guess I just give people the benefit of the doubt, like so aggressively until it’s like I’ve got multiple incontrovertible points of data, and it was like, “Nope, you’re dead to me.”

And so, I don’t know. Help us out, Tessa. If we’re just too nice, forgiving, proactive benefit of the doubting, humble, easily swayed by a very confident talker with something that doesn’t quite seem right, how do we recalibrate?

Tessa West
Seem Pollyannish. So, first off, you’d make a great gaslighter victim. They would love you because they’ll make you feel really special, and that’s kind of the first move of the gaslighter, and you’ll buy it and think, “This person is so positive and encouraging. They give me so much attention,” all of these wonderful things make you susceptible.

But I would like to kind of walk up to you and whisper in your ear this one fact that you’ve got to keep in mind, which is ability to read people, an emphatic ability, and confidence in that ability are correlated almost zero in the real world. So, if you encounter someone who comes across as super confident and knows what they’re talking about and has really strong opinions, that’s probably completely uncorrelated with their actual abilities.

In fact, some people are great and think they’re terrible, and some people are terrible and think they’re great. There are very few things in social psychology with such a weak correlation as ability, actual ability to perceive and read people, and your confidence in doing so. But we still think that confidence means competence. We mix them up all the time. It’s a really common thing people do, but those two things are also completely unrelated. In fact, there are some stats that are showing they’re negatively correlated. The louder you are, the less competent you actually are.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, appreciate that whisper and that’s handy in terms of gathering that. And so then, if we find ourselves in that situation, is there a great next step in terms of getting, I don’t know, is it just like gathering some evidence, or doing a test, or talking to somebody? It seems like a little extra dose of information could be very handy.

Tessa West
A dose of information and don’t kind of follow the temptation of talking to your best friend at work who you see as your kind of shared-reality person. So, most of us have, if we’re lucky, one person at work that we’re always on the same wavelength with that we can talk to them after a meeting, and say, “That felt really weird, right? Like, that interaction between Bob and Jen was strange.” So, our temptation is to always go with this kind of good friends and confidants.

But what you actually want to do is go to people you don’t know that well, those who have a lot of connections with others that are outside of your network because they can give you a real reality check of how widespread the problem is. And for people who are targeted by jerks, the best thing to do is to talk to others who used to work with that jerk and have since left for whatever reason because they’re just more likely…they have less to lose, so they’re more likely to open up, so in so far as you can form any of those kinds of connections.

Sometimes I talk about, a little bit in my book, the surprising connected people. So, when I worked in retail, it was the person who worked at the coffee shop because everybody went there. But now that I’m in academia, it’s actually the IT people who fix people’s computers because they really know what’s up, like they know who’s actually rude and nice and all the juicy stuff on their computers, which isn’t relevant to me but they tend to actually know everybody more than other professors do.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s true, if they’re rude or nice in terms of like, “Hey, fix this, jerk,” versus, “Oh, thank you so much.”

Tessa West
Some people are really kiss-up-kickdowners. Yeah, they’re so nice to other professors but they treat the IT people like trash. And I actually learned a lot about those folks and what I wouldn’t trust them with just based on that information.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, we talked about the last three categories, those are bosses, do we play the game any differently when it’s our boss versus just another colleague?

Tessa West
I think so. Some of the basic communication points I’ve made of opening with a compliment or strength and focusing on the behavior, those are really true for everybody. I would say that people almost never give upward feedback to a boss, so people are incredibly uncomfortable having these conversations with bosses, and your tendency is to confront people who are at the same level as you and to just never do it with a boss even if in an exit interview on your way out.

So, I would say that I think it’s not so much that we need to approach this differently because of the status difference, that matters, but it’s more that we have to learn how to confront people who are higher status than us, and we almost never do. So, we have a lay theory that you’re allowed to do certain things with people who are the same level as you or below you, but you’re not allowed to do them if they’re higher status than you.

And I actually think that’s a bigger problem that we need to break, is that we need to learn how to ask for and give feedback to everybody kind of regardless of the level because if we kind of operate with this lay theory of, “It’s cool to have radical candor with your teammate but not your boss,” that’s not going to solve most of our difficult problems at work. And even when you talk to a boss, you’re usually complaining about someone at the same level so you’re still kind of doing it. So, I do think that that matters a lot.

I would say, though, that when it comes to complaining about powerful people, it really helps to have other powerful people on your side who aren’t emotionally invested in the problem. So, in so far as you can connect with other leaders to get their advice, other managers, it really helps to form that kind of network at the top even if it’s just a quick feedback conversation you have with them so they know where you’re coming from, can give you some advice on what works and what doesn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then, if things are really nasty, what do we think about in terms of talking to HR, quitting? How do we think about those decisions?

Tessa West
I try to avoid the real egregious stuff in my book, the HR-related stuff, because I think, for the most part, if it’s really terrible in an objective law-breaking way, so Title IX, MeToo, like harassment, those are more straightforward to deal with because people are actually violating their contracts, but HR does not care about the low-level stuff.

In fact, I have dealt with HR a lot as a leader in my department at NYU, and they just like tell us to deal with it ourselves, and then call us complainers if this stuff comes up. So, their bar is really, really high for stuff to care about, and you got to keep that in mind if you want to complain to HR, that nine times out of ten they’re going to say, “This is a little low-level for us. They’re not violating anything. It sounds like you just have some conflict,” but obviously they’re actually abusing you and violating rules, that’s different, but most of the time people aren’t, and that’s kind of an interesting phenomenon where people often claim, “I’m going to report you to HR.”

I had this happen to me because I told him, I told someone not to send an email and he did, and then he told me I was going to report him to HR for complaining about the email. It was so stupid but it’s kind of an empty threat nine times out of ten because HR is busy with the real stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good to know. And then, in terms of leaving, like when do you think it’s severe enough, like, “You know what, this environment is ugh”?

Tessa West
It’s kind about, yeah, breaking up at work is hard, and I think this is something we don’t actually talk enough about, how do we decide when to leave. I think there’s a couple clues. So, the first is figuring out whether your jerk is intentional or not. Are they even aware of the problem? And some jerks that we talked about, like micromanagers and sometimes even bulldozers, aren’t totally aware of just how destructive they are. So, are they aware? So, you go to find that out.

And then you’d have to find out if they have the goal of actually engaging in change. So, are they motivated to change? We know from the close relationships that are, for instance, that if you have conflict in a marriage and one person is motivated to change and the other isn’t, you’re headed for a divorce. There’s really nothing you can do about it unless that person has that motivation. So, you need to find out whether they’re actually motivated to change or they’re just defensive and think there’s nothing wrong.

And then the third thing is what’s the environment you’re working in? Is it a breeding ground for jerks? Not all environments are sort of equally fertile for jerks at work. Some really encourage it, or at the very least don’t do anything about it, and others are really strategic and systematic about making rules and policies that make it hard for jerks to thrive.

So, ideally, you want to work in a place where it’s not super fertile ground, you don’t have this sort of dog-eats-dog hyper competitive culture that encourages things like kiss-up-kickdowners, you don’t have absentee bosses at the top who don’t care what happens. You want a place that’s like a barren desert that these jerks can’t thrive in. So, if you have kind of the ideal environment, plus accountability, plus willingness to admit, or at least understand the problem, then you’re in a much better place. But if those things are missing, then I think it’s actually really hard to stay in that job.

That said, I do worry a little bit about people leaving jobs because of jerks, especially right now. We’re seeing this with the Great Resignation because just because you leave the job doesn’t mean you’re going to find it any better in another place, and you haven’t really developed skills of dealing with this stuff. So, at least, try some of these things first before you’re ready to move on.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s actually a really great place to be, well, it’s very unpleasant to be. But in terms of if you feel like you’ve got nothing to lose, and you’re ready to leave, or rather than leave right away, try some things, and if they didn’t work, it’s like, “Well, hey, nothing lost. I was ready to be out the door anyway.”

Tessa West
“Nothing lost. I learned what works and what doesn’t.” I’m all about at least you could put forth the effort and you learned something along the way. You learned what strategies might help you in the future. Jerks at work aren’t going anywhere and we can’t control who we work with. And so, this idea that you’re going to go to like a grass-is-greener job, I think, just doesn’t really exist. I think it’s an illusion that a lot of us have. Just wait two weeks, you’ll meet a new jerk eventually, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And how might we come to conclude that we are, in fact, the jerk at work?

Tessa West
Yeah, no one thinks that they’re a jerk. I have this survey on my website, it’s my book, called “Are you a jerk at work?” And you can take my quiz and get feedback. And I had about, the first hundred people that did it online, 90% of people thought they were the ideal coworker. That can’t possibly be true. I think most of us see ourselves in a pretty glowing light but there’s a couple things you can do.

I think if you’re a leader, you can really look out for your Achilles’ heel at work. What are your weaknesses? What’s the version of you that happens when you’re the most stressed out, getting the least support, and the most sleep-deprived that you are? And all of us have kind of these emotional tendencies that can lead to jerk behavior.

So, if some of us are really anxious, we micromanage. It makes us feel in control. Others of us when we get anxious, we really disengage, we free-ride, or we’re a neglectful boss. So, you got to know what those little triggers are and then you have to put steps in place of what you’re going to do when you experience those triggers. It’s a lot like having a behavioral therapy.

You can’t control the triggers but you can control how you respond to them, and I think it’s really important to learn those and then replace them with healthier behaviors. Don’t just tell yourself, “Don’t do that thing.” Actually, replace it with something else. But they key here is if you hold even just a little bit of power, no one is going to tell you you’re a jerk. It’s rare.

I give people these strategies because no one feels comfortable confronting. Nine times out of ten, you’re never going to find that out in a direct way. You’re going to have to play detective by figuring out who seems disengaged from you, who used to show up and doesn’t anymore, so these kinds of things so you have to really look out for those subtle behaviors in other people.

And then, certainly, if you ask them if you’re problematic, they’re also going to tell you no, so you have to ask them about your specific behaviors. But I really think a lot of this has to do with knowing your own triggers and being honest with yourself about what the worst version of you looks like, and we all have that version.

We probably all saw that version during the pandemic come out at some point, and then just admitting to yourself, “These are my triggers, this is what I do, this is the worst version of me. Here’s how I act. Let’s figure out what I’m going to do instead the next time that trigger comes along and makes me feel that way.”

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

Tessa West
I’d say that if you feel like you’ve been a jerk, it’s okay. You’re in good company. We all have the potential to sort of be both on the receiving end as well as the giving end of these things. And I really want to kind of normalize people talking about and thinking about these jerky behaviors because I think they’re super common, and don’t feel like you are the only one who’s ever been targeted, or the only one who’s ever acted this way. We all have the potential to do these things, and I think it’s just all about learning smart, short, simple strategies on what to do about it.

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

Tessa West
You know, I had a really hard time with this one. You’re not going to like this quote, so, “Every body on Mt. Everest was once a very motivated person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is provocative, so.

Tessa West
My friend Annie Duke is writing a new book on how to know when to give up. You would think with trying to promote a book where it’s all about showing initiative to deal with jerks at work, I wouldn’t be pro giving up but I do actually think it’s a really provocative topic of knowing when you’ve tried all the things and it’s time to throw in the towel.

And I think, especially, and you brought this up, when we’re dealing with conflict at work, when is it time to move on? When have you done everything you can on being able to read the situation enough? So, like this little meme pops up in my social feed, and it just reminded me of this kind of important point that there is such a thing as a sunk cost when it comes to dealing with these things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, we’ve had Annie Duke on the show twice, so I’m totally looking at the release date, October 4th. Okay, hopefully, we’ll have her around then for her three-peat.

Tessa West
She’s fantastic, yeah. Nice.

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

Tessa West
My favorite study was one done by Wendy Mendes, who’s a social psychophysiologist at UCSF. But what she did was she had minorities and whites, I think they’re African-American and whites interact with each other, and she found this really interesting effect where white people engaged in these over-the-top friendly overtures, and they do this the most when they’re the most stressed out physiologically.

So, she identified this phenomenon called brittle smiles, which is the harder you try to be nice and overly smile and overly ask someone how they’re doing, the more stressed out you are physiologically. And it’s a great mismatch between body and mind and face, but I love it because I study communication. It just shows what a hot mess we often are and why it’s so confusing to interact with people.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s so hilarious on so many levels. Alright, first of all, is it only white people?

Tessa West
It’s whites and African-Americans, so we don’t know if everybody does this but I’m assuming they do. It’s a pretty general phenomenon.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, when you said white people, that reminded me of this episode of “Community” in which the character Elroy Patashnik, this like VR scientist says, “I’m addicted to encouraging white people.” And so, he’s just like, “This man knows what he’s doing.” So, he just says these like throwaway phrases that just make people feel good.

And it’s funny, I do the same thing with my kids when I’m feeling stressed, and I was just like, “Oh, my sweet angel, would you like some macaroni and cheese?” And it’s almost like I’m trying to soothe myself or it’s like I’m…

Tessa West
You’re self-soothing.

Pete Mockaitis
Or it’s like I’m unleashing my anger in a way that I hope they can’t perceive quite yet because they’re two and four and they don’t pick up.

Tessa West
They totally can, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Uh-oh. All right.

Tessa West
A second favorite study of mine. And we stressed out parents, dads and moms, and we put them through the three-year test, which was super stressful. And then we reunited them with their kids and had them play, and the kids picked up the stress from the parents, and they showed physiological synchrony with the stressed parents, and they act more avoidant with like a new person, they were more withdrawn. And this was as young as six months old, kids start to show this, so we do actually leak all that stuff out.

And, here’s a little tidbit for you, the more you try to suppress it, the worst it gets. So, just like go home and be an a-hole to your kids. That’s better. I have an eight-year-old, I get it. You’re stressed, you’re like, “Hey, want a cookie?” and they’re like, “Mom, why are you acting so strange?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Dada is feeling frustrated because it’s 3:00 a.m. and still dark outside, and he’d like for you to go back to bed. Okay? Thank you.” All right. And a favorite book?

Tessa West
Ooh, that’s a hard one. Children of Time it’s a sci-fi book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I probably butchered that. I almost exclusively read sci-fi. So, this book is about spiders on a new planet that have evolved to be super intelligent. And it’s really all about status and power and mind-reading other species and what they’re going to do. It’s the best social psychological book I’ve read on power and status about spiders.

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

Tessa West
My Google Calendar Excel spreadsheet that allows anyone who’s close to me to just write down when they want to meet in a 30-minute window, and it has saved me tons of time, and it’s also made it possible for people who are less comfortable bugging me to just go on and reserve their time. So, what I found is the people who are the most comfortable kind of nagging me for time tend to come from like really high social-class families where they learn to just push their way through things.

Whereas, the first-gen students don’t do that. They feel rude. And it just creates this kind of mismatch between who has access to me and who doesn’t. But if you get the Google link and you can just sign up, it’s kind of this great equalizer among all my students.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Tessa West
When I have feedback conversations, I always end them with, “Do you have any feedback for me?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Tessa West
And then they look shocked and they don’t know what to say but they get used to it after about the third time.

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

Tessa West
One thing that resonates with people is power and status is established within the first minute of a team and often very subtly. So, it doesn’t take much to establish yourself as a leader. Something as simple as having everyone go around the room and say their names will often work. And people find this to be surprising but really effective if they want to actually assert themselves in a team.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that feels like a whole another podcast conversation. But while we’re on the subject, okay, what are the top things I can do to appear powerful and high status in my minute? So, is it just like introducing myself powerfully or by being the guy or gal who says, “Hey, how about we all introduce ourselves?”

Tessa West
Yes, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
I should ask for the intros and that makes me powerful.

Tessa West
It does because here’s what happens, especially if you don’t know each other well, the person who asserts himself as the organizer of the group, not the person with the loudest opinions, the strongest voice. The person who says, “Let’s go all around the room and say what our names are. Okay, everyone, let’s get together and organize these applications. I’ll take A through D.” That person, all of a sudden, everything else they do is seen through the lens of leadership, all their other future behaviors, because they’ve established themselves as a non-self-interested leader from the get-go. They’re actually interested in the wellbeing of the group.

The next piece of advice I would give you is don’t try to convince people by talking for a really long time. My favorite rule is what Marty Nemko calls the stoplight rule. So, you have 30 seconds to make a point when your light is green. In 30 seconds, it turns yellow and people are hoping you wrap it up. At the minute mark, you’re still talking, they’ve minimized you and they’ve gone to shopping online. They’re not even going to listen to you anymore, so less is more.

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

Tessa West
TessaWestAuthor.com.

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

Tessa West
Yeah, I’d say normalize talking about jerks at work. If you have power, open up these conversations with a tale of your own jerkery and what you did to realize that you were off-kilter at your job, and that will really help other people feel much more comfortable in admitting their own mistakes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Tessa, this has been fun. Thank you and keep on being not a jerk.

Tessa West
Thank you. You, too.

743: How to Achieve and Flourish in the New World of Work with Keith Ferrazzi

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Keith Ferrazzi reveals fresh best practices for working and leading in the post-COVID world of work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The four critical shifts teams need to make
  2. Two tiny tweaks that vastly improve team morale
  3. Time-saving alternatives to time-wasting meetings

About Keith

Keith Ferrazzi is a bestselling author, speaker, investor, philanthropist, and executive team coach who helps teams transform enterprises. As Founder and Chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, its applied research institute, he coaches executive teams in top organizations to achieve extraordinary outcomes. He formerly served as CMO of Deloitte and Starwood Hotels. He is the author of the new book, COMPETING IN THE NEW WORLD OF WORK: How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best from the Rest.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you Sponsors!

Keith Ferrazzi Interview Transcript

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

Keith Ferrazzi
Pete, this is an extraordinary time because your name reminds me of my father, and time together always reminds me of best practices and clear action. You’re one of those individuals that I really enjoy these conversations with.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, thank you, Keith. I enjoy chatting with you, and it’s fun to be speaking to you live after I’ve read your books before I had a podcast. And you got some more coming and a big research project. What’s the scoop here?

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, so the peak of the pandemic, I saw this not only as a horrible disruption of the world, but I saw it as an inflection point; an opportunity. And what I want anybody listening to think about is “Have you really captured this pandemic and this disruption as an opportunity for your career and for your team and for your organization?”

We benchmarked 2,000 executives and entrepreneurs, and asked the question, “How do we leverage this pandemic to leap forward to work, not go back to work? How do we change the ways we’re leading? How do we change our business models? How do we really think about workforce redesign during this incredible disruption time?” And we’ve been chosen as the number one pick of Harvard coming out of the pandemic in terms of books, and this has been a massive research project that I’m excited to share with your listeners.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, we’re excited to hear it. So, you interviewed all these folks, and you asked them specifically, “Which work innovations from the pandemic had the highest return and ought to be kept, held on to?” So, can you share what are the top one, two, three themes that folks are relatively unanimous about?

Keith Ferrazzi
I’ll give you three themes, which you’ve asked for. The first one that I’ll give you is how much collaboration transformed during the pandemic, and I’ll give you a number of very distinct practices. Because we were in crisis, org charts and positional authority, they went out the window. Anybody who could lead change was given the opportunity to lead change. If you had an idea, if you had a way of working around a crisis situation, you could step into the void and you could fix it.

Now, that was extraordinary. We saw people emerge without titled leadership into significant leaders. And I want to make sure that we keep that going. I’ve never been a particular advocate for managing org charts or thinking about your team as who reports to you. When I was a kid at Deloitte, I had a vision that Deloitte could be a great marketing organization, and I started leading toward that end, and I became the chief marketing officer at Deloitte before I was 30. Before they even made me partner, I was the chief marketing officer of the company.

So, the opportunity for all of us to step into the void and see a vision for improvement or opportunity, that was afforded to us. Now, the second piece that we saw was, because of hybrid work, we could think of our teams as an unbounded way. We didn’t have to think about geolocation. We didn’t have to think about anything. We could think of “Who do we want to collaborate with to really achieve this vision?” And that’s one of the big tips I want to leave everybody here with.

Your team is whoever you need to get your job done. Now, if you imagine that, who do you need to get your job done is your team. Then the next question is, “How do I let them know that they’re on my team if they don’t report to me? And how do I invite them in to really co-create extraordinary new advances?” And the answer is just that. You reach out to individuals that you want to collaborate with, and you say, “Here’s a vision I have for how things could be better.”

And then with that, you say to them, “But I could never get there myself,” humbly speaking, “Maybe we could work together and achieve that together. We could co-create a solution. We could take that hill together.” The next thing you know, you’re now a leader of another individual who, working together, is going to achieve something that you couldn’t have achieved on your own.

We saw that happening all over the pandemic. And in the chapter that we have in the book around collaboration, we saw that hybrid work put all of that on steroids. We could really be unbounded in our collaboration and there’s a ton of things in there also on best practices on how to start rebooting the way we think about work in a hybrid work environment, which most of us aren’t thinking of today.

So, for instance, we think of the way to collaborate is through meetings. Well, the best organizations were collaborating asynchronously. They were collaborating in Google Docs and other things so that we didn’t have all of these droning meetings one after another. So, we started using the tools in a more effective way to reboot the way we were collaborating, and that was very powerful as well.

So, all of that, I would say comes under the theme that you were asking for, one of the themes, which is, “How do we really fundamentally re-imagine the way we collaborate?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And I’d love it if you could share a fun favorite story or two that shows that in action.

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, sure. It’s a big company one, it’s the first one that I think of. So, Unilever has always done business planning in very traditional ways. They cascaded business planning down from the CFO and the CEO, figure out the budgets, then they work with the executive teams, then they give everybody their budgets and they’d trickle it down.

Well, what happened was one individual, an HR person in North America, so here’s an HR person in North America had an idea, which is “Why aren’t we crowdsourcing innovations and growth opportunities for next year 2021 that I guarantee we wouldn’t have seen at the executive team, at the central headquarters in London?”

So, Mike Clementi came up with the idea that we should be crowdsourcing among the top 300 leaders in the world, not the executive team only where the growth opportunities were. And he ushered that process into being, and they literally ground-up the business-planning process instead of top-down. Another example is a learning executive inside of Federal Express was asked to host these townhalls on behalf of their chief operating officer and chairman.

Well, typically, these townhalls were one-way broadcast conversations, but this person said, humbly speaking, “Why are we, when we’ve got the technology, we’ve got breakout rooms, why aren’t we asking people questions of what risks they’re seeing in the Federal Express platform, what opportunities they’re seeing to serve customers differently?”

So, instead of a one-way townhall, they started inventing two-way dialogues, once again, breakout rooms, opening Google Docs, having people give their ideas, and they created a very two-way collaborative engagement with thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So, those are two very small examples of massive companies that fundamentally rebooted real important processes in their business because a single individual saw hybrid and collaboration and crowdsourcing and innovation as something that didn’t have to be limited to a small group of people.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Another theme in your book I want to dig into is you say that there are six decision dials that can impact the way we work. What are we achieving with this framework? And what are the dials?

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah. So the book was divided into two sections. The first half of the book focuses on how all of us need to change the way we work and lead, and there are four components to that. One of them is agility, the other one is foresight and, really, how do we look around corners and run an agile operation. And then the one we just talked about, collaboration. And then the next one, which is really a hot issue today, which is the subject of resilience and mental wellbeing.

And then what we did is we said, “Once you begin to lead in these four fundamentally different ways, where do you apply this philosophy to?” You apply it to reinventing your business model, reinventing the way your workforce works, and to, whether or not, we, as organizations, are led by the north star purpose, which became a very important aspect of a lot of businesses.

So, what you’re referring to in terms of these dials is inside of a chapter called “Workforce Redesign.” One of the things that really happened was we started to realize that the old ways we thought about work needed to be rebooted. So, of course, we’re all now thinking about “Are we physically proximate or are we remote?” So, that’s a dial going one way or the other.

Now, when we really dug into it, we realized it was a spectrum. It wasn’t just an and or or. The hybrid spectrum of how we work together actually includes a dimension that isn’t even on that dial which is called asynchronous. How do we work asynchronously? How do we work in a way that doesn’t even require meetings? How do we work in a way that collaborates in the cloud where I don’t give a damn if you’re physical or if you’re remote? It doesn’t really matter.

The other thing is whether or not you’re domestic or global. Now, on my personal organization, and this, Pete, could be something you’d be interested in, I designed an entire marketing function at Ferrazzi Greenlight. Now, we coach executive teams. I designed an entire marketing function out of the Philippines. I used to have marketing executives in my company that were about 85,000 in their base salary and their job was what I called high-touch marketing, curating relationships with executives that could ultimately buy our services. High-touch marketing, very high touch.

But there was a lot that I wanted to do around search engine optimization, there’s a lot that I wanted to do around content marketing, email marketing, etc. that I never really put as a primary because I didn’t see the return on investment for it from the kind of money that I’d dispend in the United States on marketing executives.

I ended up hiring folks out of the Philippines, an entire marketing team at, on average, $25,000 a head, who are every bit as good as the professionals I was hiring at $85,000. They work on my time zone, they’re incredibly English literate, and driven, and ambitious, and thoughtful. And so, I really, this outsourcing conversation, many organizations are now totally rethinking the boundaries of where they’re hiring. And I’m sure you’ve read a lot about that in the marketplace, but we can live anywhere and work anywhere.

And so, why doesn’t an individual like yourself, Pete, even, anybody who’s a solopreneur, whatever, you can be thinking about building a team that you were never able to think about before, both from a global perspective, gig workers. Now, we’re dealing with a choice. Do we even want to hire a full-time employee or do we want to hire an individual who’s an expert on an hourly basis that can really change the game in our strategy?

So, all of those are workforce dials that we look at in the chapter of re-engineering the workforce. I guess the one tip I would say is if you can start thinking about hiring globally, you can get incredible value for some of the employees that you hire. Anybody listening should consider that.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, yeah. I have had great results myself by pursuing that approach. Okay. And we got some extra dials here, huh?

Keith Ferrazzi
Well, look, what I really want to make sure we have time for is to get to some that which really starts in the book. There were many organizations that were fundamentally caught on their heels during the pandemic. On March 13th, I sat on a March 11th in a room with an executive team that had major presence in China, and this topic of the pandemic was only a mention at one point during the discussion, and that was just a few days before the shutdown.

Yet, the question that we looked for is, “What organizations foresaw the pandemic and were able to react to that risk whereas others did not?” We found an organization called Lockheed Space. Now, Lockheed, interestingly enough, didn’t even have operations in China, yet they had a simple process I highly recommend for all of your listeners whether, again, you’re a team leader, a company leader, or a solopreneur. They brought together, on a monthly basis, a group of individuals that would look at the marketplace from different vantage points.

“So, Pete, you’re going to handle the customer vantage point. What’s changing from the perspective of the customer? Dave, you’re going to look at competition. Jane, you’ve got technology innovations. Sue, you’ve got the focus on macroeconomic policies and finance.” And then, once a month, as a part of a natural meeting, they would spend five minutes, and everybody on the call reported if they had a major risk that they saw from their vantage point, or if they saw a major opportunity that should be pursued from their vantage point.

Now, sometimes, they would go beyond that five-minute meeting and nobody would have anything to say. Fine. Or, somebody would say, “Hey, I just read this blog about some virus in China. Maybe it’s worth us taking a look at in terms of a disruptive force.” At that point, they wouldn’t even gut-dive into it to disrupt the meeting. They would say, “Let’s have an assessment meeting to determine whether or not we move into some form of planning or watch and observe.”

Well, Lockheed Space saw this in December of 2019, they had their assessment meeting in January, and went into planning and went fully virtual in February. Fully virtual in February. And how many of us, if we had had that insight and wisdom, we would’ve shorted so many stocks, we would have invested in other stocks. As individuals, we’ve got to leave some space and time in our lives as individuals, as leaders, to assess risk and opportunity that are from different vantage points that we may not be seeing every day.

That was one of the biggest takeaways that I saw which is us realizing and, interestingly enough, it moves interestingly into the agile question. We practiced crisis agility during the pandemic. Now, I was working with Delta Airlines, coaching that executive team moving into the pandemic, and we were going to reinvent the travel industry and we’re doing a great job of it, and, all of a sudden, they lost 90% of their revenue in a day.

Now, they went into daily agile sprints. They assessed the situation from all different vantage points, “Where are the risks? Where are the opportunities?” They planned for a day. They went and did it. At the end of the day, they did a standup, and said, “Okay, what did we achieve? Where did we stumble? What are we going to do the next day?” Every single day, they went on an agile sprint willing to assess what was going on from the external marketplace.

Now, the power of that is that model of agility is well-practiced in technology companies while they’re programming and designing software. It’s well-practiced among any organization doing strong project management, but it’s not practiced in many executive teams. It’s not practiced by most of us leading our work, running our work in small agile sprints.

I believe what we saw in the pandemic was this crisis agile that is going to become the new operating system for any organization. We are living in volatility. We’ve got to lead in agile where we’re constantly assessing and re-assessing pivots and movement and readjustments, and we can’t just be planning on a quarterly basis anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful that the five minutes assignment was all it took to be like, “Oh, okay.” And then to have it on the radar and then go deep. And so, I’m curious, for folks looking to implement something along those lines, do you have any favorite ways that you think about breaking up the world of stuff to be on the lookout for?

Keith Ferrazzi
Of vantage points, yeah. In the chapter called “Foresight,” we actually have a list of the vantage points. But the reality is every company is going to be a little different. The ones I gave you make the most sense, which is by functional area, you know, sales is dealing with competition, marketing is dealing with customers, your IT folks are dealing with technology advancements, your CFO, your accountants are dealing with… etc. Those are natural.

But in any given business, you’re going to have your own nuances. And I would say one of the things you should do as you start this process is ask your team, what vantage points they think we should be looking at on a constant basis. Now, I’d mentioned this to you, Pete, that we created an entire video series around the book that helps any team move through each chapter, and anybody who buys the book gets that free video series.

So, if you go to RadicallyAdapt.com, and you purchase the book wherever you want to purchase it, just let us know that you bought the book and we’ll send you the video series. It’s all on trust. But the power of that is that in the section of “Foresight” we actually walk you through all the details of how you can set that up for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very cool. All right. Well, so we talked a bit about agility, foresight, and collaboration. How about resilience and wellbeing?

Keith Ferrazzi
So, that was one of the more exciting ones to me personally for a number of reasons. I have felt for a very long time that teams needed to build a greater relational competency inside of their teams because you know me, the guy who wrote Never Eat Alone cares a lot about relationships. And as I came along with subsequent books, we have double-clicked on how important those relationships are to functional teams and organizations.

And what I saw happened during the pandemic was what I know brings greater relationships among people and brings greater empathy among people is the willingness to be authentic and vulnerable. This got dialed up during the pandemic significantly. I saw grizzled white shoe-type old leaders being vulnerable, crying in fact, on townhalls where they were talking about the fear that they had for their parents’ health who were in a nursing home, or a spouse that was diagnosed with COVID early on in the process before we knew what that meant.

And I saw that vulnerability and that shared sense of openness, and I was proud of that, and I knew that that was something that I think we had opened a door that we’d never be able to shut again, thank goodness. Now, the question then is, “What do we do with that vulnerability? How do we resolve it? And how do we help people have greater resilience?”

Of the teams that I saw be most successful, they were the ones that had a different social contract. They owned each other’s energy. They lifted each other up. They asked how people were doing openly, and then when people were hurting, the team rallied around that person. Now, I feel like there was an old myth associated with work of the past, which is your resilience, your mental wellbeing, that’s your responsibility. And it’s not even your responsibility; it’s your private affair, and we’ll leave you to it.

Whereas, what happened in the pandemic was there was much more transparency around all of this. And some teams did a very simple practice, they called an energy check, which I love and I advocate, which is in your meetings, just every once in a while, ask, “What is everyone’s energy level?” And I’m not just talking about in the afternoon. I mean, going into a meeting, you say, “What is your energy level these days? Put in the chatroom from zero to five what your energy level is.”

Now, anytime somebody puts a two or below, then you pause, and you say, “Pete, tell me, you put a two. Are you okay?” Now, Pete might respond, “Well, my kids had a restless night, and I was just up all late last night with my kids.” “Great. Sorry to hear that and hope they’re okay.” But they might say, “Jane, why did you put a two or why did you put a one?” “Well, my spouse has just been diagnosed with needing a kidney transplant.” Now, I heard that in teams, and the person who particularly said that had been sitting on that information without sharing it with the team for two weeks.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, because nobody asked, like it doesn’t live anywhere. It’s nothing like, “Hey, anyone’s family need an organ transplant?” Like, that just doesn’t pop up.

Keith Ferrazzi
It’s not part of the vernacular. But where it used to happen organically, and this is what we found across the board, where it used to happen was in the casual walk down the hallway, or the lunchroom conversation, or the coffee-break conversation. Now, that’s where these kinds of conversations happen, but in the remote or hybrid world, they don’t happen organically. And if you make it a purposeful process, it actually happens.

What was most interesting is that we found that…we’d been coaching teams for 20 years. We had a diagnostic tool that we used in coaching teams, and what we found was that teams that made a…one of the areas is relationships. Teams that didn’t pay attention to relationships purposefully eroded their relationship score on this test.

So, one of the tests is “I am deeply committed and connected to my team.” That’s a scale of zero to five. Well, those that didn’t have purposeful processes around it went down on the score. But, interestingly enough, those that decided to have these kinds of energy check-ins, or they hosted a meeting…one of the things we recommend is a personal/professional check-in meeting where the whole meeting’s intention is “What’s going on in your life personally and professionally?” so people just share what’s going on with them.

And those teams that had these purposeful processes, actually, their scores rose above what they were when they were in physical meetings together. So, people claim that remote work eroded things like innovation and relationships. It only eroded work if you didn’t do the things you needed to do more purposefully. If you did them, it actually improved the qualities.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful in terms of it’s like, “Well, yeah, if you’re just kind of going with flow, yup, that’s what’s going to happen. It’s not going to be so rosy.”

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, it’s lazy. It’s lazy and you’re going to suffer lazy results. Now, we spend a lot more time on this, “When is a wellbeing and resilience question?” We had major partners like Headspace and Weight Watchers all working with us to create innovations, and we found a number of things. Number one, as I sort of mentioned, just the awareness and the collectivism gained around “We own each other’s energy. We’re going to serve each other. We’re going to take care of each other,” that was the highest lift in scores and mental wellbeing.

But there was no question that we needed to make sure that people were aware that they had to take a more proactive responsibility for their own wellbeing, their own mental and physical wellbeing. There were people who just sat down in the morning and they didn’t leave all day. They didn’t get their workouts, they didn’t take a break, they didn’t take a moment for themselves. And, by the way, because they didn’t leave any time for email or anything else, that time got squeezed into their evenings and weekends. They were just one meeting after another.

So, what we learned is that there are a set of personal routines that you need to adopt, and the most important thing is, if you’re a leader, you adopt those personally. Like, block your workout time, block your walk with the kid time, make sure that small breaks that you’re taking, you actually put them on your calendar so you’re signaling to the organization that they need to have those routines for themselves as well. Very powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so you mentioned a few personal routines, and we love that sort of thing here. Anything that came up again and again as being super powerful and restorative or good bang for the buck in terms of rejuvenation per minute?

Keith Ferrazzi
One that was really funny that nobody did until, all of a sudden, somebody cracked the code, one of them was end meetings five to ten minutes early.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that does feel great for everybody. No rushing.

Keith Ferrazzi
Right, it does, but guess what? Nobody ever does it because you’re in the flow of the conversation then we don’t end the meetings five or ten minutes early. So, what one group, I remember who this was, I think it might’ve been FedEx, they did something brilliant. They started meetings ten minutes late so it’s easier. Everyone is used to ending on the hour but if you start meetings ten minutes late, then that’s where the break is, and so I love that simple idea. And once companies started adopting that, that was kind of breakthrough. It’s so important that ten minutes to walk into the other room and give a hug to your significant other, or go check on the kids, or whatever it is, so powerful.

The other thing is blocking out time for you to think, do emails, and do asynchronous work. So, for instance, if you’re doing asynchronous collaboration where you’re working on a Google Doc with a group of people, block a half of an hour to do that as if it’s a meeting and protect it as if it’s a meeting. “That’s my half of an hour time to do that work,” and you tell the world that, “That’s my time, and, no, you can’t take that time just because it looks available. It’s not available. That’s my time to do my asynchronous work,” because, otherwise, as we said earlier, it’s just going to get squeezed into nights and weekends, but blocking that time is really precious and important.

So, that was another really important routine. Those are the things. What we found was that the stuff around meditation, etc., it was all very powerful but, at the end of the day, if we don’t change the way we work, none of that stuff can keep up with us.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. All right. Well, Keith, tell me, any final top do’s, don’ts, implications from this stuff, particularly from the vantage point of either a frontline manager or an individual contributor?

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, I feel that one of the greatest things we can all start to do is start to shift our meeting time out of meetings. We need to make meetings the enemy. And if we imagine saying, “Okay, how can I not make somebody of a meeting with me on this but, actually, free up time?” So, I tell you, like one of my employees who does work for me, actually she’s the individual that helps manage my speaking business, individual contributor.

And we used to have a weekly meeting just to get an update, “How’s the speaking business doing?” and she would go over all the things she was doing and I’d banter back and forth, etc.

And now what she does is she sends me a five-minute recording that I can listen to at my leisure with a quick update. And then if I have any response or feedback, etc., I just shoot her another recording back. It is the easiest thing in the world for me and it has freed up a half of an hour block of time that my administrative assistant is so grateful that he doesn’t have to have as a weekly meeting.

So, start asking yourself, how can you take meeting time off of the people around you off of their agenda. Let’s say you’re going to throw a meeting with your team, and you’re going to talk about X, Y, and Z, give you a piece of information. What we found was that during the pandemic, if you have 12 people in a meeting, only four people feel that they’re fully heard in that meeting. The average is only about four people of 12 feel that they’re fully heard in that meeting.

If, on the other hand, you send, we call it a decision board, out to folks, and say, “Listen, we’re not going to have a meeting on this topic. I’m going to say we’ve got a problem. The problem is we’re falling behind on inventory right now. And I think the solution is X and some of the struggles or challenges I know we’re going to have is this,” and send that out to everybody, and ask everybody at your leisure, “Add to the document.”

Now, you want to do a document that’s a SharePoint document or a Google Doc where everybody can see each other’s answers, and say, “You put your point of view in there.” So, now in a meeting, which you might’ve called a meeting with six people, all six people are going to get a chance to see each other’s point of view. Everybody will be fully heard.

Then you look at it, and then you decide if you even need a meeting. Maybe the problem has already been answered. And if you do need a meeting, you’ll be able to see that, really, we’re only two people that really had an opinion that mattered, so I’m going to have the meeting with these two people and let everybody else off the hook.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot.

Keith Ferrazzi
It’s powerful. Also, some of these people will say, “Well, listen, I think the better person who should be weighing in is so and so.” So, now, originally, you might’ve invited six people but maybe eight people get a chance to weigh in. These other people wouldn’t have even been invited. So, the biggest thing that I can say as a takeaway is start thinking about how you rethink some of the fundamentals of how you work personally. And one of the great evils of wasted time is meetings, so make sure that you work hard to eliminate as many of them as you can, move to asynchronous as best as you can.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And for your speaking business manager, with your quick video recordings, I love Loom myself. Is there a tool you’re using and digging?

Keith Ferrazzi
We’re really simple here on this, and that’s the other thing I found out, Pete, which is it didn’t matter what technology people used. We could jerry-rig anything. It was more about, “How do you rethink the way work is?” The fact that she could literally just send me an audio message in Slack so that if I wanted to, they’re all housed there. Or, if we wanted to get lazy, she could send me a voice text right on her iPhone. But the point was it’s not about the technology. It’s about the mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Perfect. Well, now, let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Can you give us a favorite quote?

Keith Ferrazzi
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’ve always been a thoughtful curious agile person. I want more information and I love changing my mind. It means I learned something.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. That’s good. Sorry, I’m just thinking of…

Keith Ferrazzi
Hobgoblins

Pete Mockaitis
Spiderman and Green Goblin and my kids.

Keith Ferrazzi
Exactly. Exactly.

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

Keith Ferrazzi
I would say that my favorite research is the Gallup organizations research on employee engagement, when they really cracked the code and realized how fundamental relationships were. One friend at work was the greatest predictor of an employee’s engagement. And it’s interesting, so many organizations just dismissed that as a critical element of what they focused on, engineering for their employees’ happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Keith Ferrazzi
I would say The Great Gatsby, and that has nothing to do with business. It just has to do with the plight of a man who was deeply insecure, trying to aspire into a society that he didn’t think welcomed him. And that feels a lot like my life as a young man when I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, a poor Pittsburgh kid trying to do better than my family history had been.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Keith Ferrazzi
I love this new tool called MURAL. It’s a whiteboarding tool. And I love getting on and whiteboarding things and collaborating. But I love it when it’s virtual and I love it when I can pass around between members of meetings, live asynchronously, grow. So, these days, I’ve really started to love this whiteboarding technology called MURAL.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Keith Ferrazzi
Ten minutes every morning. So, snooze to me isn’t go back to sleep. Alarm awakes, I push snooze and I do two things. I spend just a bit of time being grateful and I think about why I’m so grateful. And I happen to be, in my household, not to get too private, in my household, I need my space when I’m sleeping, so my significant other stays on that side of the bed. But that last ten minutes is my cuddle time, just time to be warm and intimate, and excited about the day, and so gratitude and connection to me to start the day couldn’t be used for anything better.

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

Keith Ferrazzi
Oh, yeah. It is that, “We can’t get there alone and, therefore, people are so important. And the currency for deeper relationships is generosity. Find the folks that matter to you and be of service.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to connect or learn more, where would you point them?

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, RadicallyAdapt.com is where we’re engaging with folks and will be for a while around this particular book. RadicallyAdapt.com. You will get all the information that you need to get the video series for free, which we’re really excited to put in your hands. Obviously, if you want to get the book there, you can do that as well. RadicallyAdapt.com. Thanks.

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

Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, it might be broader than we want for this time, but I would say, going back to my core roots, every single one of us have to recognize that your opportunities in this world will come to you not only because of your competency but because of your relationships, so build a relationship action plan. After today, literally just pick the five people who are most important to your progress and success, and be of service to those individuals.

And I would say, measure the current relationship status you have with them. Zero means you don’t know them; they don’t know you. A five means you could call them up on the weekend and cry about something that you’re disturbed by, so it’s that end of the extreme. A three is what we normally call a friend at work, just an acquaintance. I want you to try to move those five people into being fours and fives, not twos and threes where they usually reside. So, build a relationship action plan.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Keith, this has been a treat once again. I wish you much luck in the new world of work.

Keith Ferrazzi
Thank you, Pete. And thanks so much for your generosity of this amazing audience.

739: Greater Happiness and Success through the Principles of Influence with Brian Ahearn

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Brian discusses how influence really boils down to investing in people.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The secret to liking and being liked 
  2. How to use contrast to be more persuasive
  3. How to use LinkedIn to create real-life connections 

About Brian

Brian Ahearn is the Chief Influence Officer at Influence PEOPLE. An international trainer and consultant, he specializes in applying the science of influence in everyday situations. He is one of only a dozen individuals in the world who holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer designation. 

Brian’s first book, Influence PEOPLE: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade that are Lasting and Ethical, was named one of the Top 100 Influence Books of All Time by BookAuthority. His LinkedIn courses have been viewed by more than 400,000 people around the world.  

Resources Mentioned

Brian Ahearn Interview Transcript

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

Brian Ahearn
Thank you for having me on, Pete. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear some more wisdom about influence coming out of your book, The Influencer: Secrets to Success and Happiness. But, first, I think we need to hear a little bit about for your wife’s 52nd birthday, you had quite…you orchestrated quite the gifting situation. Tell us the story.

Brian Ahearn
I did. I like to give unique gifts to my wife. And when she turned 52, I thought, “What can I do?” It’s not a birthday that people typically celebrate. And when I asked people, “What do you think of with the number 52?” most often I hear them say, “That’s the number of cards in a deck of cards.” True. But there’s also 52 weeks in a year. So, my gift to her was a gift a week for the entire year. So, every weekend, whether on Saturday or Sunday, I had a gift for her to open up.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re talking about a physical item?

Brian Ahearn
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog.

Brian Ahearn
Every week there was something that was wrapped that she got an opportunity to unwrap, and it was a surprise.

Pete Mockaitis
How do you even think of 52 relevant…? Give us some examples. Well, it’s tricky, my anniversary, wife’s birthday, and Christmas come all in the month of December, so I’ve really got to be thinking ahead of the game, like, “Okay, which gifts for which occasion?” And I find it challenging. So, you’ve done 52 of them. What’s the trick?

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. Well, the trick was, one, I was a good listener, paid attention to the things that she was saying. And then, two, I incorporated the help of a daughter because sometimes we’d go to the mall, and she might say, “Oh, mom wants eyeshadow but she just didn’t want to get it for herself. She thought it was a little bit expensive,” so I would pick it up.

And what I did, Pete, was I always had anywhere from five to eight gifts at the ready. So, I kept them in a bin and I would bring them upstairs from the basement, and then she could shake the boxes and choose the one that she wanted. So, I was never under pressure, like, “Oh, my gosh, what am I going to get her this week?” So, my daughter was a huge help. And between that, we just got some momentum. And the more I did it, actually the easier it got.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I imagine, with any skill, there is building and development. It kind of reminds me of doing a podcast. You’ve got to be a few episodes ahead, and then it just flows. Like, new people booked, and then we just keep that chain moving, 700 plus episodes in.

Brian Ahearn
And you don’t have to spend a lot. It really becomes the thought that counts and the uniqueness of things. So, as an example, my wife is the handyman around the house. She does almost all of the repairs. She enjoys that challenge. One time, I got her a hanging light so that if she was under the sink or somewhere, that she could just bring that light and she could hang it. And she thought, “That is so cool. I wouldn’t have gotten that for myself.”

So, there was really odd and unique things, but it was every week. It was fun when I would bring that bin up, and I will say on the positive side, as a husband, you’ll relate to this, if you’re having a bad week, you could always say, “Hey, I got you a gift.” It made everything better.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll keep that in mind. All right. Well, you’ve got another book here, The Influencer: Secrets to Success and Happiness. You went with a parable style this time. What’s your thinking there?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I love teaching people about the psychology of persuasion, the science of influence, and I was well aware, after having written my first two books, that there are some people who will not pick up a heavy business/psychology book, which my first book Influence PEOPLE was. And then there are some people will never pick up the sales book, because they’ll say, “Well, I’m not in sales so I’m not going to pick that book up.”

And I wanted to reach a wider audience, and I thought, “Well, most people like stories, and the business parable seems to be a very popular genre,” so I decided I would give my hand a try at writing that. And I had extra time, we were all locked down for quite a while, and so I used that time productively to write in a story format.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so tell us, for diehard fans of How to be Awesome at Your Job, who have heard you here three times, I think you’re the only one who’s been here four times, so kudos. I just love influence and I love the way you talk about it, so here we are. What’s something you can share about influence that we haven’t heard in the first three occasions? And, yeah, lay it on us.

Brian Ahearn
Okay. Well, one story that really stands out to me is around a character named Al Harris. So, let me back up and say that the lead character in the book, John Andrews, you meet him when he’s born, you learn a little about his family, he was off to college, learns a little bit about influence in a Psych 101 class, but doesn’t really get it until he gets out in the work world. And when he gets his job, he starts learning from coaches, mentors, and clients, and really begins to see the application of influence.

And one of the people that he meets is Al Harris. Now, Al was based on a real person, Al Janette that I have known for more than 30 years. And almost every character in the book has its basis in somebody who had an impact on my life. So, in the story, our lead character, John, meets Al. He’s at his medical facility, and when they go to lunch, he’s courting him as a prospective client.

He says, “Al, I got to ask you something because I’ve been to a lot of medical facilities before, but yours really has a family atmosphere. What is it? What’s different about your office?” And Al says, “Well, I’m going to let you in on something I don’t tell everybody. I’m alcoholic and I try to hire people who are on the path to recovery.” And, of course, John is a little bit shocked because this guy doesn’t seem he’d be alcoholic, and so they start to have this conversation.

And what Al explains to him is that people, if they can overcome the disease, he feels like working in the medical facility will be easy for them, and he wants to give them a sense of purpose, and give them some feelings that maybe they hadn’t had before, and so he brings them in. And what John learns is the principle of unity because Al lets him know that, “When I’m helping another alcoholic, it’s almost like I’m helping myself. And when that other alcoholic succeeds, or helps me, it’s almost like I’m succeeding and they’re helping themselves. So, we have this unity.”

And it goes from his head to his heart, that is John, he really, all of a sudden, is like, “I get it now that this deep, deep connection that you have with other people,” which Cialdini calls the principle of unity, and I really learned that from my friend Al because, about three years ago, when I was getting ready to speak at his insurance agency, we were driving into the office, and he said, “Oh, so and so that you’re bowling with last night, he’s a recovering alcoholic.” And we had a conversation very similar to what the characters in the book had. And it was really wonderful to be able to honor Al and teach the world what Al taught me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and it’s beautiful, the unity notion, and I’m thinking about our conversation with Bob Cialdini. Thanks for introducing us.

Brian Ahearn
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
About how, I think it was, “I’m a student here, too,” like doubled the response rate associated with asking for something. So, unity is so powerful. And that’s a cool way to think about it. It’s like in helping them, it’s like you’re helping yourself but it’s also not selfish at the same time. So, unity – cool.

Brian Ahearn
Exactly. Now, something that was really cool, later in the book, as John is mentoring somebody, he thinks this person has a drinking problem, and he confronts him about it, and, ultimately, he hooks him up with Al, and Al spent some time with him, and I won’t say what happens. I’ll let readers read about that. But what was really cool, Pete, was I was in Grand Rapids at the end of September to speak at an insurance conference, and I randomly sat down at the bar for dinner one night when I didn’t have plans, and the person who was next to me was really drunk.

And we ended up having a conversation for a couple of hours, and I gave him my business…

Pete Mockaitis
Hours?

Brian Ahearn
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Brian Ahearn
And I gave him my business card, and I said, “I really enjoyed speaking with you tonight, and I’d like to stay in touch. Now, you’ve got my number and my email.” Well, he connected with me and, ultimately, I connected him with my friend Al. My wife was like, “Oh, my gosh, it’s like your book is playing out in real life.” So, that was really cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And I don’t know if I’ve ever had a conversation with a really drunk person for two hours, so that’s noteworthy in and of itself in terms of what gets shared.

Brian Ahearn
It’s a God thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what gets shared and what you cover.

Brian Ahearn
And I’m still in touch with him. He sent me a text yesterday and said he had gotten my book, and so who knows? That conversation and my connecting him with Al, just like in the book, may set him on a path that changes the course of his life, and that feels good.

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed. And so, actually, that’s the perfect segue, Brian, because that’s where we want to go next in terms of so, influence, you say it’s not just about getting what you want, or hitting a sales quota, or achieving some career objective but it plays a role in our broader success and happiness. Can you expand upon that?

Brian Ahearn
Sure. I know that your listeners, they want to be the best they can be at work but they also want to have a positive impact, positively influence other people, and I think this book, the narrative really shows them how, through the arc of their life, influence, not only helps them succeed the office but can help them succeed at home, whether it’s their relationship with their spouse, with their kids, their neighbors, and every one of those is a part of this book.

John has an interaction with a neighbor whose nickname is Bud, and he’s based on a real person that I know whose nickname is Bud. And what I saw with Bud was, four or five years ago, I went out to San Diego to go to his daughter’s wedding, and my wife was with me, and we were in San Diego, and she said, “Oh, I want to play Torrey Pines, the world-famous golf course where they played the US Open many times.”

So, my friend, even though his daughter is getting married and he’s busy, he said, “What time do you need to be at the golf course?” because he had a car. And she said, “I need to be there by 6:30,” and he’s like, “I’ll be downstairs at 6:00 o’clock.” And true to his words, he was. We went to the golf course, she got on at like 7:00 a.m. tee time. And I tell you, Pete, I think he was happier for her than even how happy she was. And it just hit me, he has this rare quality of more joy in his friends’ happiness than his own good fortune.

So, the character Bud in the book is that comes forth as John interacts with him as a neighbor, and you get to see that giving isn’t about what you’re going to get from the other person. Most of the time, it’s just about the feeling that you get in knowing that you’ve helped somebody. And then you start to realize your joy is almost unlimited because there’s always opportunity to help others.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so beautiful. And then, as we think about influence principles, like reciprocity, it’s true that that person, the golf example, well, now, she really wants to…if that guy wants favor, she’s going to hook him up because that was huge, so there’s reciprocity in action as an influence principle. But in terms of the joy from the giving and serving, it’s like I’m thinking of Charlie Sheen and bi-winning, “You’re winning twice.” You’re winning because you’re serving someone and feeling the joy in serving them, and you’re winning because you’re building reciprocity so you’ve got some trust and relationship capital there that may very well be helpful when you need to make a request in the future.

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. And I hope that people who would read the book would really start to lay hold of that, in that, yes, reciprocity is a natural human tendency to feel an obligation to give back when someone first gives to you. And so, we do try to engage that to help people and to maybe make a sale or whatever the things are. But I want people to start getting deeper and start to realize that even though I might get something from that other person, the truth is I will always get something. If I do it in the right spirit, I will get that feeling of joy knowing that I’ve helped make somebody else’s life better.

And my purpose, with my business, Influence PEOPLE, I always say is professional success and personal happiness, and I want people to start going, “Hey, a lot of my happiness is going to come when I get to know and like these people, and then I genuinely want to help them, and I can just step back and feel that joy that comes with that.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Thank you. Cool. Well, then so tell us, what might be some of the, if we think about John, the protagonist, learning some things in the book and having them hit not just the head but the heart, what are some other top lessons learned that you think have the capacity to both improve our persuasiveness as well as our happiness and success?

Brian Ahearn
Well, in one section, as he is being mentored as a newbie at his role at a medical supply company, he is doing a ride-along with Ben Blackstone. Now, Ben Blackstone is based on a person I knew, Ben Blackman, who was a Cialdini student and very good at utilizing all of the principles. And during this ride-along, he notices that Ben’s customers love him. They really, really like this guy.

So, of course, John is this young trainee, and he says, “What’s the secret? Your customers clearly like you. What do you do to get them to like you?” And Ben kind of slyly says, “I don’t do anything to get them to like me.” Of course, John presses, he’s like, “You must do something because it’s so apparent how much they like you,” and he keeps kind of like playing with him and putting him off, like, “No, I don’t do anything to get them to like me.” And then, finally, John says, “Well, then I give up. I’m missing something.” And then Ben reveals the secret, and he says, “I never do anything to get people to like me. I do everything I can to like the people I’m with.”

And, to me, that’s the gamechanger with the principle of liking. It’s not about me doing what I can, Pete, to get you to think, “Oh, I’m so cool and you ought to hang out with me.” It’s me doing everything I can to get to know you and like you, and to find joy in our interaction. And I think that’s where people, when they sense that, and we all have pretty good BS meters, but when we really believe somebody truly likes us, we become so much more open to the interactions that we have with that person. But the good news is the more I get to know and like you, then I really, really want your best. And that way, whatever I’m putting on the table is received differently to you, and we really create that win-win.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And tell us, then, what are some of the best ways that we can get ourselves to like someone else? So, one is that curiosity, learning and asking questions. Any particular questions or other ways that we can develop some more liking for somebody?

Brian Ahearn
Well, it’s interesting, Pete, that two people can do the same things. So, we know what the principle of liking, for example, we find what we have in common. If we learn that we went to the same university, had the same pet, grew up in the same hometown, any of those things that we find we have in common, you naturally like me more, and I naturally like you more.

Or, if I pay you a genuine compliment. Now, one person can do it with an intent just to get something. And if there’s any used car salesmen out there, I’m sorry, that’s quite often what we think about used car salesmen will say and do anything to get you to buy a car, and we can usually sniff that out a mile away.

So, the difference, I think, is the mindset that we go in. We still want to connect and what we have in common, we want to pay the genuine compliments, we want to look for ways to work together that will lead to success, but I’m not doing it to get you to like me. I’m doing it because deep down I’m saying, “I want to enjoy the people that I work with, the customers that I serve, the vendors that I deal with, and so I will choose to do this in order to have that enjoyment.” And, to me, that’s the difference-maker because it comes across differently at that point.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you. So, that’s huge in terms of it comes across differently when you do genuinely like them. And so, totally, a hundred percent, that makes sense. I guess I’m thinking about maybe if there are people or people at certain times that you find hard to like. I think about, it’s funny, holidays that seems to be a thing with regards to, “Uh-oh, Thanksgiving. Oh, Christmas dinner with the crazy uncle who has the completely different political or whatever belief that just makes you or everybody else upset.” Okay, so I guess that’s a trope but it’s the trope we’re in during this time of year.

So, yeah, when liking is hard to come by, how do we, as authentically as possible, access more of it for somebody?

Brian Ahearn
Well, there is a character in the book and based on somebody that I really had difficulty with getting connected to, and his name is Braden. And when John moves into a new team and he begins to interact with that guy, he feels like everything that I do with other people that seems to foster relationship and help to have good working environment is not working with this guy. So, there ends up being an opportunity for him to kind of confront that, and he did so in a soft way but by asking a question.

And he just really says, “Look, I really try to like the people that I work with but you seem to be very hard to get to know. What gives? What’s up?” And he prefaces it with, “I’m going to ask you something and if you’re not comfortable, please then you don’t have to answer, but I’m doing what I can to really try to get to know you and foster this working relationship. It’s not getting anywhere. Is there something I’m missing?”

And then the guy opens up and he begins to share something. It’s almost like the air is let out of a balloon, somebody is finally showing interest in him, and he opens up. And that opening up really begins to foster a relationship with him. So, I share that to say when there are people who are difficult, first of all, always know they’re probably difficult for a lot of other people so don’t take it personally. But I really believe if you can break through with those people, that you will find that there’s somebody on the other side who is really an awesome person to know but they’re not letting it out.

And that can be a self-defense mechanism. It could be that, well, because people don’t respond well to them, they just put up this wall and then they can justify to themselves, “Well, I don’t need somebody to pat me on the back,” or, “I don’t need someone to like me. I’m okay just the way I am.” But, really, inside, they’re desperate for wanting people to connect with them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. Thank you. Well, I don’t think we talked much in our previous conversations about how to use the contrast principle to be all the more persuasive. Can you speak to that?

Brian Ahearn
Sure. Well, contrast tells us that two things can appear more different depending on how they’re presented. An example that I used with my other books is, Pete, if you walked into a store, and let’s say you’re looking at a couch, and I’m the salesperson, and you’re looking at it, and you asked how much the couch is, and if I say $799, and then moments later, I come back and I say, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake. It’s $999.” Suddenly, you don’t feel very good about that couch.

But if you’re looking at that same couch and I had told you $799, and then I come back and I say, “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s actually $599.” So, what I say first dramatically impacts how you experience what comes next. That very same couch can be looked at entirely differently based on what it is that I did beforehand. And I think people need to always be aware of this because something that we emphasize when we do in-depth training with people is this.

The principles that we talk about may not always be available. You may not have, for example, scarcity, or you might not be able to tap into social proof. But contrast is always available because human beings are always making comparisons to things. We talk about, “Is that car expensive or inexpensive?” “Is he tall or short?” Those are comparative statements.

And once we realized that, we need to step back and say, “Whatever it is that I’m off or whatever it is that I might ask, how can I put something out that becomes the comparison point so I don’t leave it to chance as to what that person may be thinking? I kind of set the comparison point so that what I present next looks most favorable.” Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it is. And it’s funny, I recently purchased a newer vehicle. It’s the Mazda CX5, and I love it. And it’s funny, we’ve operated at zero cars for a very, very long time at our household. And then with toddlers and COVID, and then moving from Chicago to Tennessee, it’s just like sort of changed the game, and so now we have two cars after so long with zero cars, and that’s been fine for my Chicago lifestyle.

And it’s so funny because it felt kind of pricey but then it’s so relative in terms of it’s like, “Well, it feels pricey compared to a Chevy Aveo or similar,” via economy class, the thing that they put forward in rental cars, but if I look at this relative to some Teslas, Genesis, BMW, I feel like I got quite a bargain. And so, you’re right, like it completely changes the way you think about it in terms of like, “Am I being irresponsible in splurging too much?” versus, “Wow, I am such a prudent steward of finances and value-seeker.” That really resonates.

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. And so, again, if you’re the person who’s trying to influence another, what is a legitimate comparison point that you might present that could make whatever it is that you’re offering look more valuable? Like you, I got a new car last year so I’ve had it for like 15 months now, and it was a really nice car. I’d never been a car guy, and so I never thought I would buy a Lexus, but my wife’s father always drove them, and she’s like, “These are beautiful cars.” Once I drove it, I fell in love with it.

But what I realized, too, that even though I was paying a good bit more for that car than I had ever for a car, I also started saying, “You know what, if this car operates like his have, I’ll have this car for at least 10 years because they are so reliable as long as you maintain them.” And my wife had had one for a long time and it was a phenomenal car. So, that became my comparison point. If I have this thing for 10 years, what I spent on that car is nothing for what I’ll get over the life of that car.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, yeah. So, the contrast is really…it’s kind of like framing or contextualizing in terms of like how do we frame it in terms of the lifetime. And it’s funny, we talk about cars, like Tesla does that with that too, like, “Oh, well, when you take into account the savings you’re going to get from governmental electric vehicle support and not gas,” it’s like plain on their website and maybe they’ve updated it. It’s kind of funky, like, “Wait a minute. How much money am I really giving you right now because of how you’ve presented these figures?” So, very cool. Thank you.

Well, Brian, you tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few more of your favorite things?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think we’ve talked a lot about relationship, and I think that’s the foundation of John Andrews and his success and his happiness. Now, all the principles are certainly talked about throughout the book, but what I would encourage people is, when we talked about the principle of liking and how important it is to come to like the other person. If you really think about it, Pete, how that informs the other principles because, once I really get to know and like you, I probably understand how to give better, I understand how to engage reciprocity in a much more meaningful way.

If the more I get to know, if I want to engage social proof by talking about similar others, well, I know you so I know people who, then, are similar. If I am utilizing the principle of consistency, what have you said or done or believed, well, I found that out by getting to know you. So, for me, it is the foundation that the house is built on is the principle of liking and, even deeper than that, if you want to say the basement would be unity if you can really find genuine unity with somebody. But I think everything else gets built from that.

And I think, in this time where we are so divided in so many ways, if more people would say, “Every interaction I want to go into, I want to get to know and like these people, even if they look vastly different than me on the surface in terms of their beliefs and their values and things, there have to be things that we also share in common.” And can we focus on those to say, “Even though we’re different, I really do like you”? I think our workplaces, I think our society, I think our world will be much better off.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that so much in terms of like the relationship and the liking. And I’m thinking in our own podcast operations, when we invite guests, so sometimes we have incoming pitches, but more and more lately we’ve been seeking out people proactively based on listener requests for certain topic areas, which is like 10 times, 20 times as hard, like generating names out of thin air and research, research, research. But I think it results in a finer product that listeners love all the more, I hope.

And so, I think we used to, in our “Come on down. Be on the show” email, just sort of say, “Hey, we’ve interviewed some impressive people, like…” big name, big name, big name. And so, that has some power associated with it, like, “Oh, those guys are a big deal. And if they said yes, maybe I should say yes too,” like social proof.

But I think what we’ve done is make it a little bit more customized in terms of we now say “…and we’ve interviewed people you know such as…” person, person, person “…based upon our mutual shared connections on LinkedIn. And even more so…” ideally, if it’s someone who has endorsed their book, “This is someone you look up to and admire if you request that they endorse your book, and we happen to have them, which, after 700 interviews and plus, that’s semi-frequent nowadays,” as well as sort of like the closer they are to their field. Like, “Oh, this person is an academic versus a business leader versus a bestselling author kind of vibes.”

And I haven’t done a hard AB comparative test but we have seen our rates of acceptance rise. And so, I think that’s beautiful in terms of, okay, yes, okay, we’re talking about social proof and social proof, but it’s like social proof plus because it’s based on doing some extra time and effort and energy associated with, “Who is this person? Who do they know? And who might they admire?”

Brian Ahearn
Yup, I think the extra time and energy is always worth it because people pick up on that. A very common one is, you mentioned LinkedIn, if I send a request to somebody, I always have a personal message in it. Now, if I’m sending out a lot, I might do a copy and paste, so it might be, “Pete, I know you were at the conference, yadda, yadda, yadda,” “Joe, I know you were at the conference,” but every person gets a personal email, and I’m very diligent about that.

I mention the conference I spoke at in Grand Rapids. There were about 400 insurance agents there. Every one of them that I could find on LinkedIn, I send a personal request. And I had hundreds that connected with me. Those are my potential customers. Those are the people that I could help the most given my background in insurance, so it was totally worth the extra time and effort to go and do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Brian, you know, it’s funny, I’ve hung around a lot of speakers who are all interested in growing their businesses, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mentioned doing that, which makes total sense because they already know you, a little bit, and they may not have spoken to you but they heard you talk for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, so like, “Oh, Brian, I recognize that name and that face, and I heard him say some things. And I thought he was at least moderately entertaining and insightful, if not epically unforgettably entertaining and insightful,” which I imagine is the latter in your performances.

So, it’s a far cry from a total cold random LinkedIn message, and now you’re connected, and then that’s like, “Oh, I know a guy. I know a guy who does this stuff.” It’s like we’ve gone from, “I saw a guy speak once. What was his name?” to, “I know a guy, and he’s in my connections. And even if I can’t remember your name three years from now from that LinkedIn connection, I know where to dig it up pretty quick.”

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. Well, I tell you, Pete, I’m heading to Santa Fe next week to work with a small insurance operation, and it’s because I reached out and connected with somebody at a conference I spoke at four years ago. And when this person reached back, I honestly didn’t remember the name, but I looked and I had sent him a personal, and we just didn’t have any other interaction beyond that, but he remembered that he liked the talk. And because he was connected, he was able to find me, and that’s what led to this great opportunity to go to Santa Fe.

So, it works but you can’t just look at it and say, “Well, gosh, I don’t have an hour to do this, or two hours, or whatever.” You do. If it’s important enough, you have the time to do it, and you have to believe that you’re putting in, you’re investing at this point but it will pay dividends down the road.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thanks. Well, now, let’s hear, do you have another favorite quote that you might want to share with us?

Brian Ahearn
The favorite quote that I share a lot, and this is top of mind right now because I just had coffee with my old high school football coach, and it was 40 years ago now that I played my last game and played under him, and we have stayed in contact since then because he truly cares about his players more than winning games. It’s the men we become, the husbands, the fathers, the businesspeople, productive people in society.

And he always told us that opportunity, or luck was where preparation and opportunity met. Now, I mistakenly thought he’s the one who came up with the quote. Somebody told me it was Seneca, the Roman philosopher, but, still, my coach is the one who imparted it. And because he had such an influence on my life, and I think about that all the time, that whenever an opportunity arises, I need to be ready for that.

And so, I stay sharp on all the things that I do. If somebody called me tomorrow, and said, “Brian, could you get on a plane and go here and give a one-hour talk?” Boom, I’m there because I’m always ready to do those things because of what he impressed upon me.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And a recent favorite book?

Brian Ahearn
A recent favorite, other than my book?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm, “The Influencer: Secrets to Success and Happiness.”

Brian Ahearn
I just finished a book called You Have More Influence Than You Think.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Brian Ahearn
And I heard Vanessa on the Behavioral Grooves podcast, and it sounded really interesting so I connected with her on LinkedIn, and said, “Hey, I’ve been on the podcast like you,” and so it’s a very natural connection. Picked up the book and it was just a different angle of looking at influence, and I found it really, really interesting and the research that she shared. So, I would say that’s the most recent one but, really, I’ve read a lot of books over the year but that one really, really stood out for me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We had her on the show, and it was thought-provoking in all the best ways. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I’d say connect with me on LinkedIn. And as I did probably the first three times, I promised anybody who reaches out, if you don’t tell me how you found me, you will get a reply back to say, “How did you find me?” I just like to know why people are reaching out, but it’s that opportunity to start some dialogue. If they say, “Hey, I heard you on Pete’s podcast,” I’m still going to reply back and say, “I love Pete and his show, and thank you for reaching out.” So, there will be personal interaction if you do. And then the other place, too, is my website InfluencePEOPLE.biz. You’ll be able to find my email, my number if you want to connect with me through that, plus, all the resources that are available there.

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

Brian Ahearn
My call to action would go back to what we’ve already talked about a lot, that the principle of liking is the foundation that everything else is built upon. And I would just challenge people, if nothing else, that tomorrow, when you go to work, or whatever it is that you’re going to do, that you pause and tell yourself, “I want to like this person that I’m going to interact with. What can I do to connect with them, to compliment them, to get myself to really like them because, if nothing else, I will enjoy that interaction more?” And I think people will be very pleasantly surprised at how people respond when you go in with that attitude.

Pete Mockaitis
Brian, thank you. This has been a treat. And I wish you more success and adventures and fun in your influencing.

Brian Ahearn
Thank you, Pete. I really appreciate it.

732: How Aspiring Leaders Can Succeed Today with Clay Scroggins

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Clay Scroggins lays out how leadership is rapidly changing and what aspiring leaders can do to adapt and succeed.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The 4As for mastering tricky conversations 
  2. Why the “right” people aren’t necessarily the right people 
  3. One question to surface your superpower 

About Clay

Clay is the author of the best-selling books How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge and How to Lead in a World of Distraction. He holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech as well as a Master’s degree and Doctorate with an emphasis in Online Church from Dallas Theological Seminary. 

In January of 2022, Clay is releasing his 3rd book titled The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future: 9 Surprising Ways Leadership is Changing. No one denies the changing landscape of leadership, but Clay explains how to become the kind of leader the future is demanding. 

For the past 20 years, Clay Scroggins has served in many pastoral roles at North Point Ministries, a multisite church started in Alpharetta, Georgia led by Andy Stanley. Most recently, Clay served as the lead pastor of Buckhead Church, one of North Point’s largest campuses.  

He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Jenny, and their five children. 

Resources Mentioned

Clay Scroggins Interview Transcript

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

Clay Scroggins
Oh, Pete, thank you. I feel so grateful to be back because last time I was here, you changed my keynote talk that I do on the book that you were interviewing me about, so thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks.

Clay Scroggins
I hope today is just as impactful.

Pete Mockaitis
No pressure. Cool. Well, to kick it off, it’s been a little while and we’re going to be talking about your book here The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future: 9 Surprising Ways Leadership is Changing. And I’d love to hear a surprising lesson you’ve learned in the couple years since we’ve last spoken.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I resigned from my job three months ago, so I don’t know what exactly the lesson is for the future of leadership but I’ll tell you, for the now, it has been remarkably great to be self-employed.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Yeah, certainly. Well, I’ve enjoyed the journey myself, pros and cons, and every set of tradeoffs. Cool. Well, hey, good luck. I hope that you continue rocking and rolling.

Clay Scroggins
Well, you know, I feel a bit like a walking cliché about it because we’re in the middle of The Great Resignation. United States is resignation nation. We went through a pandemic, or going through a pandemic. Anyone who is in a helping industry – nurses, teachers, nonprofits – and then I was in the clergy business, I was a pastor, still am doing a lot of preaching at churches on the weekends, but anybody who’s in one of those lines of work, the emotional toll of the pandemic just seems to be a little bit more stressful, and I just felt like, “Oh, of course.” Like, I went through a pandemic and quit my job.

But honestly, it wasn’t the challenge of the last year and a half. I actually enjoyed the challenge over the last year and a half, but it was that feeling that I think everyone has from time to time, which is, “Can I do it? Like, do I have it in me to make a go of it on my own?” I guess it was like a little bit of a, “I’m going to take a bet on myself.” And, obviously, you did that. Was it ten years ago?

Pete Mockaitis
Just about, yeah.

Clay Scroggins
Crazy. So, that’s pretty much what I decided to do was, “Let me go out and see if I can do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. It’s good to have you.

Clay Scroggins
My kid bought me this Van Gogh poster, and she’s been meaning to write “Let’s Van Gogh” on this poster. Well, she gave it to me as a gift for working for myself now, which I thought was really brilliant. She hasn’t “Let’s Van Gogh” on it quite yet. I need her to. So, let’s Van Gogh, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Let us. Let us, indeed, Van Gogh. Well, so tell us, what’s fundamentally sort of the main thesis or big idea behind the book The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I, like everyone else, noticed that leadership is…I like leadership. Let me back up and say I enjoy the concept of leadership. I think everybody was made to have an impact on this world. I think it is baked in your DNA that you want to make a difference, that you want to build something, grow something, create something, move something forward. And I believe at every level of any organization, every single person is a leader.

Leadership is not about authority. It’s not about a title. It’s not about power. It’s about the ability to influence someone, to move someone to do it, they maybe don’t even want to do to accomplish what they want to accomplish. And so, from that standpoint, I’ve written a couple of books on leadership. So, I spend a lot of my time speaking about leadership, talking about leadership, helping organizations that have a girth of emerging leaders, of swaths of emerging leadership, helping them figure out how they can become better people. When you become a better person, you usually become a better leader.

And I started realizing, obviously, in the last couple of years, “Oh, my goodness, leadership is changing at a rapid rate.” And I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. Every time I’ve started out to research the topic of how leadership is changing, every blogpost, every book, every research study, started with that same concept – leadership is changing. Leadership is changing.

But the more I tried to understand it, the more I realized, none of us really know how it’s changing. And if you don’t know how it’s changing, it’s really not very helpful. That Wayne Gretzky quote that to be really great at hockey you have to skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck has been. If we’re going to grow and develop into the kind of leader that the future is demanding, then we have to know how leadership is changing.

So, that was really what was behind it all, was, “All right. Well, then how is it changing? What are the ways that leadership in the future is going to be different than it has been in the past? And let’s talk about it.” So, I threw a bunch of research, and reading, and studying, and thinking, and conversing, came up with nine, I call them, surprising ways. Some of them are less surprising than the others but nine ways that leadership is, in fact, changing, and how we can become the kind of leader that the future is demanding.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I would like to get a view of that. And maybe to kick us off, could you provide an example or illustration of what’s some leadership going on – and you don’t have to name names, but you can if you want – that is old and broken and not what’s with it anymore?

[06:02]

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think some of the cliches, some of the tropes of leadership that I remember, when I was probably 20, 21, I co-oped for Accenture business strategy consulting firm when I was an engineering student in Atlanta, and the phrase is like “Dress for success,” “Fake it till you make it,” “Don’t let them see you sweat.” They used to watch how people would salt their food to determine whether or not they made good decisions. If you salted your food before you tasted it, you were rash and impulsive.

They would look at how clean your car was to determine how organized you were. I would say, at a very basic level, it’s those kinds of things that I feel like are maybe good examples of the old way of leadership that is no more. That’s kind of that GE – and I love GE, I love Jack Welch. Straight from the Gut was one of my favorite books, but I would say that concept, that style of leadership is probably one that is of the past.

Clay Scroggins
Does that resonate with you at all? Do you remember any of it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I agree with you that. Well, I guess I thought those were never good. And they weren’t good then, they aren’t good now, in terms of because there’s all kinds of reasons why, “Oh, maybe they salted their food because they’ve been to this restaurant before, and they know darn well it’s insufficiently salty.” So, if you’re going to draw an inference on someone’s career and future and potential based on that datapoint, that’s really foolish and you should have a more robust process to assess the things you’re looking to assess. There’s my hot take on that.

Okay, so that’s old school. Well, then you’ve got nine particular surprising ways. Can you give us a quick rundown of what those nine are?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, the first one is the idea that you don’t have to know everything to be a leader. Most people think that, “I’m not ready to lead because I don’t know enough.” I think because the way knowledge is rapidly changing and growing, we have to be more comfortable with those three words “I don’t know” if we’re going to be willing and ready to lead.

The idea that you need a coach, whether you’re going to pay for that coach or not, I think is something that my parents’ generation were a little less accustomed to. The idea that all the greatest athletes have coaches. I think the great business executives have coaches. That concept is new. The idea that if you fail you’re not a leader, is outdated. I think all of us are going to have failings, that you’re not going to have just success after success after success.

The idea of not just being aware of your weaknesses, but being intimate with your strengths, I think it’s surprising to me. There’s been research that’s been done that says the majority of people think their weaknesses can grow while their strengths remain stagnant, remain fixed. But the truth is you can grow your weaknesses and you can grow your strengths as well. But when you ask that interview question, “What are your greatest weaknesses?” most people have their canned answer, but most people are not aware of their superpower, their strengths.

That Jim Collins line, “Get the right people on the bus,” I take that concept and really challenge whether or not we know who the right people are. I think who the right people are is changing. Some people that might have been deemed as the wrong people have helped me become, helped me make right decisions, helped me become more of a right leader, helped me to see more rightly even though they may have been the wrong people. So, challenging that concept was really exciting for me.

The idea of trust, I think, is pretty crucial as we look toward the future. In the past, particularly with our work environments where you could walk down the hallway and look over someone’s shoulder to see how they’re doing, within a matter of days, the concept of trust on teams was challenged in a way that it had never been challenged before because everyone is working from home. So, learning how to give trust without demanding trust, learning how to give trust to be trusted, I think is a way that leadership is changing.

The concept of conflict. The conversations that we’re having at work, I’m sure, Pete, even though you work for yourself, you’re well aware of this, there was a day where you left religion at home, you left what you thought about a lot of the social issue at home, but we’re having those discussions at work on a regular basis, “What do you think about race? What do you think about gender? What do you think about sexuality?” Those are conversations that are very common in the workplace. Not only that, but people are growing less accustomed to having conflict. So, the idea of learning how to have healthy conflict, I think, is going to be more important for the future than it even was in the past.

Learning to lead with vulnerability. Most leaders are, we’ve been taught, “Hey, I’ve got to ‘show the best and hide the rest.’” Social media enforces that. And learning how to lead with that thing that makes me feel most insecure, learning how to lead with my weakness is something that I don’t think we’re naturally accustomed to.

And then the last way leadership is changing is around the idea of success. Learning that success is not a scarce commodity, but learning that it’s really having an abundance mentality when it comes to success, making sure the people that you work around know that, “Hey, I’m in this for you. I’m not in this for me. And when you’re successful, I’m successful. If you’re not successful, I can’t be successful.” I think that concept is a way that the future is going to demand that of us whether we’re ready for it or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I like that. So, those are juicy in terms of we have nine ideas, which you can think, you can bat around, you can chew on and dig into. And so, to recap, number one, saying it’s okay to not know. That’s cool. Two, we all need a coach to be our best. Three, you’re going to fail and that’s normal. Let’s see, four, you want to be intimate and knowledgeable of your strengths, your superpower. Five, the wrong people can, in fact, be helpful. Six, give trust to be trusted. Seven, learning how to have healthy conflict. Eight, leading with vulnerability, a place where we’re insecure. And, nine, success is abundant and not a scarce resource we need to squabble over and politic and scheme to hoard.

Clay Scroggins
Pete, can I have an engaged interruption?

Pete Mockaitis
You may.

Clay Scroggins
As you look at those, which one do you think, “Oh, yeah, that definitely is new”? And maybe another way to think about it, Pete, when you think about your parents, which one would your parents go, “Wait a second. Why is that one on the list?”

Pete Mockaitis
I think that the one that struck me is new is when you talk about learning how to have healthy conflict, like in some ways that’s not super new. Like, I guess, what do we have? Abraham Lincoln, “Team of Rivals,” like, okay, yeah, old school, and that sure was helpful in terms of having that healthy conflict. But in terms of, yeah, what folks are bringing into the workplace, and I’m thinking right now about Basecamp. They had quite the kerfuffle associated with the leadership.

And I don’t know the ins and outs of the story, but it seemed like they were somewhat good-intentioned when the leadership said, “Hey, guys, you know what, these kinds of issues, I feel like they’re getting a little bit divisive, a little bit distracting. Let’s not do that anymore.” And then there’s like a riot, like, whoa, like it really blew up.

Clay Scroggins
Coinbase did the same thing. Sounds like they’re very similar situation, where the CEO of Coinbase basically said, “Hey, look, we’re not dealing with that. We’re here to continue to help in the decentralization of the economic system of the world. We’re not trying to solve the race issue, so let’s leave all that outside.”

Pete Mockaitis
And that didn’t go well for them.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think he feels great about it, but I think there was a walkout, there was a protest. And there’s a part of it I can understand why he would say that because he’s going, “I’m not an expert in this. I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s get back to talking about the economy and how we pay for things.” But, no, I think, in general, it was not received really well.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, it does really feel like a new thing in terms of that’s happening now. And I guess that’s a whole other conversation if that’s good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate, inappropriate.

Clay Scroggins
Exactly. Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
But it’s there in terms there are a healthy proportion of folks who want to engage and think it’s necessary, proper, and appropriate to engage on those matters at work. So, lay it on us, Clay, how do we do that well?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think the way you put that is really great, Pete. Pete, just so you know, this is what’s great about your podcast, is you do a great job of playing this, like, Switzerland, neutral, “I’m just a facilitator,” but you’ve got really great thoughts, and you have great interjections and opinions as you’re trying to pull things out of people, so thank you for doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Clay Scroggins
But I give a plan, I give a, “Hey, if you’re trying to become better at conflict, here’s a way to approach it.” I give four A’s that you can work on, that you can go think about, you can prepare for. Number one, would you affirm the person however you can? You might not be able to say much, but would you affirm them? “Here’s what I believe is true about you. Here’s what I’m afraid you’re going to think about this conversation, and I just want to let you know that’s not what it’s about.”

So, it’s really affirming your intentions, it’s affirming what’s true about the other person, and it creates safety. What you’re trying to do in any high stakes difficult conversation is you’re trying to build a bridge of safety that’s strong enough to bear the weight of whatever is about to come across that bridge. And so, if you can start by affirming whatever is true about that person, I think you’re off to a great start, but you have to prepare for that. You don’t want to think of that on the fly.

Secondly, would you ask a couple of really curious questions? Arrogant people don’t ask questions. They don’t have to. They know it all. But people that recognize, “Hey, there’s something I don’t know. There’s something that you see that I don’t see. And whether you’re right or I’m right, or you’re wrong or I’m wrong, I’ll be better if I can get behind your lens and see the way you see it.” And so, would you ask a couple of curious questions that will allow you to see from the other person’s perspective?

And then, third, would you acknowledge what you’ve heard? Miscommunication has started wars in this world. It can certainly start a fight or a conflict in your workplace. And so, learning how to simply acknowledge what you’ve heard. We do this a lot with engaged couples. We do a lot of premarital counselling, my wife and I do, with engaged couples. We’ll have them sit on our couch six or eight times before their wedding, and the session on conflict, we’ll say, “Hey, bring the latest, greatest conflict you’ve had.” It’s always about the in-laws, by the way. Spoiler alert. It’s always about the in-laws.

And so, what we’ll do is we’ll say, “All right. You, sir, would you explain what you wish would be different with your spouse?” And he’ll say, “Well, I wish you would check with me before you call your mom about,” said situation. And then she’ll go, this is her acknowledgement, we’ll have her repeat back. He’s assertively communicating, she’s actively listening, and she’ll say, “So, what I hear you saying is you don’t want me to talk to my mom anymore?” “Okay, that’s not exactly what I said. That’s not what I’m hoping for.” So, there’s a chance for them to sync up what they’re actually saying. That’s really important.

And that’s what that step of acknowledgement is doing. It’s trying to let the other person know, “I hear you.” When you say something, that’s important. But when you feel heard by someone, it is such a crucial part of communication. So, if you’ll start by affirming and ask a few curious questions, and then acknowledge what you’ve heard, and then advise, and then give the advice, or whatever it is that you want to bring, you’re just off to a way better start. And the problem is if you don’t go through it in that order, if you go through it in the reverse order, which is what most people do, most people want to fire off the text to the boss or the peer, to the coworker, “Hey, I just want to let you know this is your problem. And how dare you? And you better not,” and whatever.

And if you do that, you end up having to walk backwards through the process. You end up having to acknowledge that you were wrong, ask for forgiveness, and then affirm that you really love working there. So, if you don’t go through it in that order, I think you’ll end up paying for it in the end, but that’s just a simple process. As we think about the future, why conflict is even going to be more important in the future than it was in the past, specifically healthy conflict, my hope is to give a pathway for people that they can prepare for so that they can have healthier conversations at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. That’s cool. So, affirm, ask, acknowledge. Nifty. Let’s hear about wrong people being helpful.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I love what Jim Collins has said. Jim Collins is like the GOAT. That book Good to Great, I’m sure it sold more copies. He has not sold more copies than you have had podcast downloads, I can promise you that.

Pete Mockaitis
What 50-million-ish? Maybe.

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, you might have, I don’t know. He has sold a lot of Good to Great copies. And that line “Get the right people on the bus” I’ve had it rattle around in my head for as long as I’ve been leading teams. But what I found is that what I thought was right might not be right. I always thought right was, “I get along with them. I like them. They’re like me. They look like me.” And the more I have stepped into leadership opportunities, the more teams I’ve led, the more I’ve realized that the right people aren’t always the right people.
And sometimes the people that I think are the wrong people are the ones that actually helped me the most. Just because you’re ambitious, it doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you are prickly doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you’re hard to get along with doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Now, certainly, you want to be a great team player, you want to be willing to get along with the people around you, but sometimes the wrong people really do help you see the right way or make the right decision. And I think that’s new. I think that’s different. I think that’s a different way of seeing the future than the way we’ve seen it in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they’re the wrong…I guess what this means is sort of like the halo effect or if there’s a devil horn effect in reverse.

Clay Scroggins
The opposite, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, someone is prickly or abrasive and, thusly, they’re all bad. And then they’re not the right person to be on the bus, and so they don’t belong on the bus and so don’t associate with them. They’re unclean.

Clay Scroggins
Unclean, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, it seems that in this instance, like the very same candor, shall we say, associated with that prickliness or abrasiveness is just what the doctor ordered in terms of helping you see blind spots or learn, grow, improve.

Clay Scroggins
I certainly think so. I’m sure you’ve had people that have…it’s been the people that have challenged even the way you’ve ran your business or thought about your podcast that maybe, initially, you were like, “Ugh, I don’t like the way that feels.” But in the end, they’re the people that actually helped me grow and helped me change, helped me see something that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

And so, I think early on in my leadership, I thought, “Get the right people on the bus. I got to get the people that I like on the bus. I got to get the people that are like me on the bus.” But the longer I’ve led, the more I’ve realized I don’t know that I’ve got the right concept of who the right people are and how sometimes the wrong people are the right ones to help me see differently. Honestly, Pete, it’s why I think people underestimate diversity.

If your team looks just like you, there’s a problem. Somehow deep within you there’s probably something within you that wants to justify why you look the way you look or why you are the way you are. But valuing other opinions, valuing other backgrounds and the way other people see it is only going to help you see more clearly. It’s only going to help you reach the people that you’re trying to reach, or sell whatever it is you’re trying to sell.

And I think sometimes we miss that about diversity, that we feel diversity is…there’s an altruistic motive behind diversity that I think is great. But I think we miss out on the idea that you will come up with better…you will make better decisions if you get people around you that don’t look like you, that don’t see like you. It will only help you in the future. And I think sometimes we miss out on that. That’s a complicated thing for two white guys to talk about, but I think it’s a really important part as we look toward the future, as we start thinking about who should be on the bus and who shouldn’t be on the bus.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly. As you have a broader array of perspectives, you get a fuller picture of reality and, thus, yeah, especially over the course of many decisions, you’re going to have better ones and sometimes epically better ones. So, that’s handy. Let’s get your hot take on being intimate with your strengths and knowing your superpower. First, Clay, what’s your superpower?

Clay Scroggins
I think my superpower is the people around me. They feel believed in. They feel like someone sees them. I’ll tell you, you’ll find out more clearly what your superpower is when you resign from a job, which is kind of unfortunate. But they did a little exercise on my last day of work where everybody had a whiteboard, and they said, “All right. Everybody, write on the whiteboard, what do you want Clay to know?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Clay Scroggins
And that was a great exercise. And there was a gal on our team who grew up very differently than me, looks very differently than me, has a very different background than me, but was an incredible teammate for me. And she wrote on her board, she said, “What I want him to know is I’m grateful that he always saw me.” And I thought that’s pretty stellar. I think that I probably gained more awareness of what I was good at by leaving than I had while I was there, which I think is one reason why every now and then you ought to just quit a job and resign from a job.

I had the same job for about 18 years, and so I don’t know how much you’ve done on resignation, Pete, but the morning I had to go meet with my boss to resign, I opened up my podcast app and typed “How to resign from a job?” because I had never done it before.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we had an episode on that. I’m wondering if we turned up.

Clay Scroggins
I wanted to make sure I got it right. It’s kind of a hidden…it’s one of those hidden parts of having a job that you just don’t think about until you have to do it for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, it sounds like you did it fairly classy if that’s the sort of exit they gave you as opposed to a swift kick in the butt, and a, “Here’s your pass. Get out of here.”

Clay Scroggins
Lit everything on fire and the doozies, right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Clay, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I do think we would all agree that the future is going to be different. I think we would all agree that we’re moving toward a different future than the past that we came from, and I hope people feel encouraged by that. I certainly do. I think, as I started thinking through this concept, I felt so encouraged that I think a lot of these changes in leadership are healthy changes.

There was a story that Angela Ahrendts…I had a chance to interview her for this project. Angela was the CEO at Burberry, and then after that, left to be the senior VP of Retail for Apple. And Angela told this story about sending out these videos to her 75,000 retail employees at Apple, and she was trying to unify them, she’s trying to bring them together. And so, every Monday morning, she would send out a video called Three Points in Three Minutes, which I thought was a great little concept.

She said one of the first times that she shot it, she had a video crew in her office, and she had a phone call in the middle of while she’s shooting it, and it was her daughter, Angelina, who was in school in London, in college. And she said, “Hey, just keep it rolling,” and she picked up the phone, and she said, “Hey, Angelina, I’m shooting this video right now. As soon as I get done, I’ll call you right back.” Her daughter said, “No problem. Call me back.” She hung up the phone. She finishes the video. She gets done with it, she tells the camera crew, she says, “Hey, keep that in there, send it out just like that.” They said, “Are you sure?” They’re like, “We’re Apple. We make beautiful things.” She’s like, “Yes, send it out just like that.”

She said the next morning, she wakes up, and looks in her email, and she had hundreds of emails of people telling her, “Thank you. Thank you for reminding us that you’re a person too, that you’re trying to do your greatest work, but you’re also trying to be an amazing mom, and you’re trying to have a great marriage, and you’re trying to be a great person. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

And so, I think some of those changes like that, that’s an example of vulnerability, it’s an example of being open and honest about what’s really going on in life, and I think there’s something for all of us to learn in that, that people want a different kind of leader. People do not want a leader that has it all together, that knows everything, that has the right answer for every single issue. People want a leader that’s willing to say, “Hey, I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know but I’m working on it as well, and I don’t have it together either. I’m inviting you to help me become a better leader. I’m doing something that’s such a big deal, I can’t do it alone, and I’m inviting you to be a part of this.”

And I think that’s who we all want to work for. I think that’s the kind of leader we all want to work for. So, why not become that kind of leader? Why not become the kind of leader that is growing into that kind of vulnerable, aware of conflict, better at conflict, giving trust even though you might not feel trusted kind of leader? I think it’s the kind of leader we want to work for and I think it’s the kind of leader that we all really want to become.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Okay, so resigning is one way that you can get some insights in your superpower. What are some of your other practices you recommend to get those insights?

Clay Scroggins
Well, the easiest way is to ask people. Probably the best simplest thing that I did was anytime you’re changing jobs, whether you’re resigning or not, it’s a great time to ask people around you, but you don’t have to wait until you changed jobs to ask the people around you. I just sent a simple Google survey with three questions, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that bothers you? And what do I do that I don’t even know that I do? What are my blind spots?”

And, of course, Pete, like anybody, the parts that I harped out on, that I really camped out on, were questions two and three. But reading the answers to question one, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that motivates you?” it gave me such crystal-clear clarity on what it is that I do that people appreciate. And so, the easiest way to find out what you are good at is to ask the people around you. Most people just don’t know.

I’m amazed at how many interviews where you ask people what their weaknesses are, and they give you the Michael Scott answer, “I work too hard. I care too much. I spend too much time at work. Those are my weaknesses.” But most people, they don’t know what they’re good at, and the people around you know. They know what you’re good at. And if you can become more intimate with your strengths, you’ll find that your strengths are what the people around you love you for, and you can grow in those and become an even more valuable player today and tomorrow as well.

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

Clay Scroggins
I love that Abraham Lincoln quote, “I prepare and I study because one day my time will come.” I love that little simple concept that I think what he’s trying to say is “I recognize that destiny has something for me in the future.” And I think that’s true for every person, that the future has something for you. The future has something where you’re going to be called a moment, a mission, an opportunity where you’re going to be called upon to lead, and so what you’re doing now is not wasted effort. What you’re doing now is not worthless. No, it’s so important because you are getting ready for that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Clay Scroggins
I love Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. Do people ever comment on that one? Does that ever come up?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s come up a couple of times. I listened to the audio version but I hear it in my mind’s ear right now, “You’re in the box.”

Clay Scroggins
“You’re in the box,” that’s exactly right. That’s probably my favorite leadership book and it’s in the fable, it’s done as a fable, which some people like the fables and some people don’t. But, yeah, I love the concept that you are constantly affirming the narratives that you’ve already written about people, and so you have to challenge those narratives or else you’re going to just continue to put them, in the words of The Arbinger Institute, “In the box.”

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

Clay Scroggins
Well, ClayScroggins.com would be the easiest place to go but I’m on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, a bit on TikTok, not a lot, but some. So, @ClayScroggins, that would be great.

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

Clay Scroggins
Well, I would just say continue to study, continue to grow, continue to learn because you just never know when your moment is going to come. And if your moment hasn’t come and you feel passed over, or you feel like people have forgotten you, there’s still more to come. Your story is still being written. And if you can continue to grow and develop and challenge yourself, I think you will be better prepared for whatever the future holds.

So, I’m grateful for podcasts like this that help people grow personally because without this, we just wouldn’t have opportunities to challenge ourselves, to hear new ideas new and concepts. So, Pete, you’re modeling, I think, which is a great thing for every one of us, which is to consistently try to learn something from someone so that you can grow and prepare and challenge yourself to be ready for whatever the future holds.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Clay, thank you. This has been a treat. Keep up the great work.

Clay Scroggins
Back at you, Pete. Thank you. Thanks for having me.