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Sep 27
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706: Minimizing the Frustration and Resentment of Workplace Conflict with Jeremy Pollack

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Jeremy Pollack says: "Put care first."

Jeremy Pollack shares how to prevent conflict from ruining your relationships.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The six basic needs at the heart of conflict
  2. Three tactics for keeping your calm in a conflict
  3. How to handle a conflict that’s going nowhere 

About Jeremy

Jeremy Pollack is a leader in the field of workplace conflict resolution and peacebuilding. He is the Founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, the largest workplace conflict resolution consulting firm in North America, and a regular contributor on the topics of leadership and organizational conflict management to publications such as Forbes.com, Fast Company, Industry Week, and many more. Jeremy is also the author of the recently released book The Conflict Resolution Playbook: Practical Communication Skills for Preventing, Managing, and Resolving, Conflict. 

Resources Mentioned

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Jeremy Pollack Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jeremy, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jeremy Pollack
Hey, Pete, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. You’ve got a wealth of experience when it comes to conflict resolution. And I’d love to hear, for starters, what’s one of the most surprising and counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about conflicts and resolving them?

Jeremy Pollack
That’s a good question. So, I’m not even sure that this is totally counterintuitive but it’s just something that has dawned on me through the work that I’ve done, is that someone’s sort of approach, attitude, etc. in a conflict really dictates the way that others are also going to interact with them.

So, if you’re in an escalated state, it will escalate other people. And if you aren’t, it’ll help deescalate. And so, one thing that I’ve worked on with people, for instance, is what I call being generous with your heart, essentially, which is making the first concession. And sometimes people feel like, “Well, why do I always have to be the bigger person?” or something like that.

But if you start to cross that line and be a little bit generous, be a little bit more open, maybe a little bit more vulnerable, it usually opens the door for someone else to do the same, because a lot of people are trying to save face, especially when they’re resolving conflict. They don’t want to admit they’re wrong and they don’t want to admit the other person is right or something like that.

So, if someone is willing to make that first concession, and say something like, “You know what, I think you’re right,” or, “You know what, you’re not wrong,” or just admit that there’s a sphere of possibility that someone is not necessarily wrong or right, and be a little bit vulnerable. It actually opens up the space. So, I don’t know if that’s counterintuitive but it was something that it seems almost intuitive but it kind of dawned on me through the work, I’m like, “This is really an important step in resolving conflict.”

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting about that concession, “Okay, you’re right,” it’s like they don’t have to be right about the core contentious piece, but it sounds like, if this is fair, you could give them some bit of concession, affirmation, validation, on anything, like, “Hey, it totally makes sense that you’re trying to look out for what’s best for your building,” or, “your tenants,” or, “your employees,” and they’re like, “Well, yeah, of course.” And so, it’s like that costs you nothing.

Jeremy Pollack
Absolutely. If you could just find one point of agreement, especially if it’s like a deeper-level agreement, an agreement on sort of a core value, or a core interest, or a core need, or something, if you just find one point of agreement, that opens up a sphere there of possibility to start collaborating so someone can see you not necessarily as an opponent but they start to see you as, “Okay, this is someone who’s essentially becoming a partner in this resolution process.”

So, it’s as simple as when you say the words, “You know what, I think you’re right about that,” or when you say the words, “I agree with you that that’s important,” or, “That concerns me too. You’re right.” Those kinds of things, it suddenly takes you out of the opponent mode and into a mode of, “We’re on the same team, potentially. We just come from different perspectives or different positions. We need to figure out how to get aligned in some way, but we do have some shared or common values there.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Cool. Well, hey, so we got one tip off the bat. So, maybe we can zoom out a bit and tell us your book the, Conflict Resolution Playbook, what’s sort of the core idea here?

Jeremy Pollack
The Playbook is really aimed at being a very practical step-by-step book for different types of conflict scenarios. So, for both personal and professional life, I think we’ve got several chapters, 15 chapters on just different types of conflicts and give a little bit of an example of what could happen and some techniques to help resolve, manage, or transform the conflict. So, it’s meant to be like a very sort of step-by-step playbook as it’s written in the title.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I understand the psychology of human needs is a big part of this. Can you unpack for us what are some of the core needs that we got to have in mind as we’re engaging in these conversations?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, there’s a wide research field in human needs theory, and it’s been done in different types of fields from economics to psychology to anthropology, and there’s sort of a consensus on certain needs. But essentially, I’ve done a lot of research in this field and it seems to me, I’ve focused on six core needs, essentially. But some of the really basic ones are safety. It’s not physical safety but psychological safety, a feeling that, “I have an expectation of feeling secure and stable and, also, I feel safe to be myself, be who I am without the fear of retaliation of some sort.” So, that’s psychological safety.

We have a basic need for autonomy, to feel that we have agency or some input in making decisions that affect us in our lives. We have a basic need for identity, and I might clarify that by saying it’s a need for a positive, coherent identity, so we try to structure our world in a way that makes sense for us and how we fit into it.

And when someone, for instance, does something, or seems to do something, or seems to say something that threatens, even unconsciously feels like a threat to one of those basic needs, we respond in fight/flight, we respond in acute stress response, and that’s typically where a lot of conflicts start is this perception of a threat to one’s basic needs, goals, or values.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You listed three of those needs. Can you share what are the other three?

Jeremy Pollack
Sure. Well, we have a basic need for care, or what we might call connection, so being part of groups and feeling like we’re cared about by other people. We have a basic need for stimulation, for feeling challenged, engaged, etc. And we have a basic need, at least in this culture, we have a basic need for growth and progress, a feeling that we’re making some progress in life. And it doesn’t mean financial progress, or it doesn’t mean progress in a certain domain. It means progress in some way, like, whether it’s on a health domain, or a self-care domain, or my home domain, or some feeling that I’m moving forward. So, most people have this basic need.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really interesting in terms of when you start to feel escalated, I think this is a really great framework in terms of, like, “Hey, what’s going on here? Oh, I feel that my autonomy is potentially being impeded here. That’s what’s going on and that’s why I’m getting a little bit, like, going.” So, maybe while we’re there, do you have any tips for, hey, when you’re in the moment and you’re starting to feel a little bit like you’re approaching the furious, how do you cool it off?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, good question. So, number one, I would say there’s a little bit of prep work sometimes. If you’re noticing that you’re getting triggered on a regular basis by certain things, certain situations, certain people, you might do a little analysis, like you said, and just determine, “What is it that this person or that rhetoric is triggering in me? What does it feel like it’s threatening?”

And you can go through those kinds of six basic needs or some basic goals that you have, or values that you have, and start to understand, like, “Is that a true threat? If it’s a true threat, how do I know that’s truly threatening me? What are the consequences?” kind of unpack it a little bit. And if you’ve noticed that you’re feeling threatened by something, you might have a framework for what would be called cognitive reframing or I sometimes call it soothing.

So, like for instance, if I’m in a situation at work and I’m feeling micromanaged, and it’s feeling like I’m not being trusted, that might be threatening my sense of identity as a worker there. It might also be threatening my sense of autonomy, to control my own sort of work style, etc.

And if I start to remind myself, “Wait a minute,” just mentally, “Wait a minute. I’m still in control of my work situation. I have power. No one’s taking away my power. I’m safe. I’m okay. I know who I am,” whatever the kind of thing is that you need to hear to soothe yourself, that’s a cognitive reframing technique that could be important, and it’s really unique to each person. They have to kind of figure out, “What is it that feels like it’s a threat? And how do I reframe it that?”

The other things that I talk a lot about are breathing, which is I think something that a lot of people talk about when they start feeling like they’re escalated. Focusing on your breath, you can do some basic breathing techniques like counting down three, two, one, as you breathe, as you exhale, and counting up, one, two, three, as you inhale, and just focusing on that breath and just kind of staying calm.

Another one is mindful speech. So, being able to speak, you’re going to slow down your speech a little bit so that you actually hear yourself enunciate words, articulate very clearly. And that process, any mindfulness techniques, whether it’s breathing or speech mindfulness, helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, it gives the brain a signal that it’s okay to slow down, we’re not in a flight/fight, we don’t need to protect ourselves against the threat. So, slowing down your breath and your speech and even your movement sometimes can actually help you sort of signal the brain that it’s time to calm down a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool stuff. And I’m curious, could you share with us a cool story of some of these things really coming together for someone who used these principles to get through a tricky conflict situation?

Jeremy Pollack
Well, it’s hard for me to speak exactly on other people’s experience. I can speak on my own, I guess. I definitely had, for instance, a difficult conversation even yesterday with an employee who gave me some feedback about something that I did as a leader and put her in an awkward position, and it was tough for me to hear at first, and I was listening and, really, my inclination, just like most people’s inclination, is I really want to defend myself, I really want to sort of dismiss what she’s saying, almost reject it, let her know, “You’re incorrect. That’s not what I said. That’s not what I meant,” and sort of defend against. I’m sort of feeling my heart rate increase a little bit.

But I used these techniques. I slowed down my speech. I waited and listened. I didn’t defend. I very, cognitively, made a point not to defend myself and, instead, try to validate her. Slowed down my speech, focused on my breath, and just calm. And then when she was done talking, I just tried to kind of repeat back what I heard from her, made sure that I clearly understood it, and then validated her in some way. I actually ended up agreeing with her on some levels, I said, “You’re right. I did put you in an awkward position, and that wasn’t my intention. And I didn’t even realize I did it. It was definitely a blind spot. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I’m going to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”

And I gave her a little bit of a plan that I thought would be a good plan, and she agreed and that kind of thing. Anytime, especially for a leader, I think, in my experience, it’s very hard to get feedback sometimes because we have an identity as being the leader or the boss or something like that, and if someone is challenging that, giving us feedback, it’s very easy to get triggered and to feel like, “Well, this person is kind of challenging me on some level as being her boss or his boss,” or something.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And so then, in order to have more of those positive conversations and outcomes, you outlined 10 essential communication skills for resolving conflict. And I’m curious, it might be tricky to go through all 10 in the time we have available. But what’s maybe a couple that you think are super easy to improve with a couple quick practices or tactics that make a big difference?

Jeremy Pollack
Okay. So, one skill that I think is really important that I include in pretty much every training and coaching program that I deliver is called validation, and there’s some great material on validation, but it’s really simple. Essentially, when someone gives you some piece of feedback and it’s hard for you to hear, first of all, calmly listen and some of those techniques we just talked about where you can start breathing and you can just calm yourself down, maybe cognitive reframe things. Just breathe for a second and just listen.

And when they’re done, the validation part is, number one, “Can you repeat back what you heard?” So, this is a form of reflective listening. So, repeating back what you heard in some concise way so that they know you heard them and you also know that you heard them correctly because then they have the opportunity to say, “No, that’s not what I meant,” or, “That’s not what I said.” Or they could say, “Yeah, that is what I said,” and so they feel heard. So, that’s really important to calm someone, deescalate someone in a moment, especially if they’re feeling a little emotionally triggered.

And then if I could find some piece, as we said in the beginning, if I could find something that I could find agreement with or some merit in what they’re saying, and let them know, “You know what, that’s important,” “You know what, I’m concerned about that too,” “Yeah, you know what, I think you’re right. That was a misstep on my part,” or anything that you can find agreement on. Again, that lowers the defenses and it opens up a space for being collaborative.

And then the next part, I always say that there’s two main parts to conflict resolution. One part is the care part. It always starts with care, and that means listening, validating, trying to find alignment. So, it’s showing that I’m here, I’m caring about what you’re saying. And then the next part is solution, which is a collaborative process. It shouldn’t just be a sort of unilateral where I say, “Well, here’s what I’m going to do.” It should be, “Well, here’s what I’m thinking about doing. What do you think about that? Or, do you have any suggestions?” and opening up that space for collaboration and creating a solution that seems to work for everyone.

So, those two pieces – validation, alignment in all that care bucket – and then the next piece is sort of working towards a solution of collaborating on a solution, being creative, maybe sometimes thinking outside the box. Those are two pieces that are really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally, I think those really do make a world of difference and often is a lot of fun to see what you can come up with together there. Now, you also mentioned six classic conflict scenarios: criticism, passive-aggression, gaslighters, insubordination, conflict with the supervisor, and confronting a bully. First, just definitionally, I’ve heard different definitions for gaslighting and gaslighters. Lay it on us, Jeremy, how do you define gaslighting?

Jeremy Pollack
Gaslighting, essentially, is a way of trying to call into question someone’s reality. So, if someone brings to you, “Hey, this is how I’m feeling,” or, “This is what I experienced,” or they’re confronting you or giving you some feedback, essentially, and you say something like, “Well, that’s crazy,” or, “Well, that’s just ridiculous. That didn’t happen. Stop being so sensitive.” Those types of things where you’re basically calling into question the validity of someone’s reality, that’s gaslighting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, when you find yourself in these scenarios, I’m curious, to what extent are there some universal prescriptions versus specific prescriptions in terms of, “With criticism do this, versus gaslighting do that”?

Jeremy Pollack
I have some formulas that I tend to use so if I’m feeling like I’m getting criticism instead of gaslighting someone, I have a different, like a sequence that I might use. And one thing that I tend to focus on is trying to separate behavior from interpretation. And what that means is when I’m hearing someone giving me feedback on something that I’ve done, like this is what happened yesterday, they might have a story or an interpretation or a judgment on the behavior that I did or what I said, what I did.

And my job is not to internalize their story and their judgment, and start making me feel a certain way about myself, and then I get triggered. My job instead, if I can, is to separate out, “What’s the behavior that they’re talking about, what I actually said, what I actually did, and the interpretation or the judgment that they placed on it?”

The first part, I can own. And if I can own that, if I can go, “You know what, you’re right. I did do that. I did say that.”

That helps a lot in deescalating the situation because it helps people feel like I’m not gaslighting them and, actually, I’m owning up to the thing that I did. The next part, the interpretation part, I don’t have to own because that’s their interpretation, that was how they perceived it.

What I can do with that part is I can reinterpret for them, “Here’s why I actually did it,” and I can also reassure them, “Let me just tell you that I didn’t intend for that. I actually really do value you, and I apologize if I was not clear and I came across like I didn’t value you or I don’t value your time. I really do value your time. I appreciate your time and that wasn’t my intention. And the reason that happened was…” and then you can give your real explanation.

So, reassurance and reinterpretation are what you can do for the judgment part. Ownership is what you can do for the behavior part, and that requires you separating those two things out – behavior and interpretation. That’s a way to respond to someone’s criticism. To respond to someone’s criticism with gaslighting where you just kind of immediately dismiss or reject them, and you say, “Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s untrue. I didn’t do that. I didn’t mean to do that. It’s crazy that you think I did that.” Those kinds of things are very, very frustrating because it makes the person feel completely unheard, completely unvalued, and will usually escalate the situation or create a lot of resentment.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, if you are, I guess, I don’t know, the victim or the recipient of gaslighting or bullying behavior, or passive-aggression, what are some of your top tips in terms of how do you address that well?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, this is an important topic. I’ve coached a lot of folks that are recipients of sort of chronic gaslighting and sometimes chronic bullying. If you’re in a situation with someone who you generally trust and you have a good rapport with and you just feel gaslighted in that moment, certainly, you can give them some feedback and say, “You know what, I understand that this is feeling a little bit intense for you, or it’s triggering you in some way, but it feels like you’re not listening to what I’m saying. You’re not hearing me. How can I get this across in a way that we can communicate better about it?”

You kind of call it out in the moment, because if you have the rapport and the trust with that person, you have a relationship with that person, it helps to highlight that and maybe they can calm down. And if they can’t, then maybe it’s time, “Let’s pick this conversation up tomorrow. I think it’s probably better if we pause for a second,” or something like that.

But if you’re dealing with someone who’s a chronic gaslighter, who you really never feel heard by, they’re never willing to own up to their behaviors, admit that they’ve done anything wrong at all, it’s always someone else’s fault, or etc., that’s a tough one to correct in terms of the relationship. And what I usually work on with people is they need to set boundaries for themselves as a form of self-care, as a form of self-esteem because self-esteem can be very much hurt in relationships where there’s constant gaslighting or even constant bullying going on. So, really making sure that you take care of yourself by setting some clear boundaries.

And sometimes with gaslighting, a lot of what I hear with gaslighting is someone will make an agreement with someone, and then two weeks later it’s out the window because the gaslighter basically says, “Oh, it never happened. We never talked about that. You’re crazy.” And it’s really important for someone who’s dealing with a gaslighter to start writing things down a lot, unfortunately, taking notes, making sure that they can check with themselves, not that they’re going to convince the gaslighter that they’re wrong or something, but they can check with themselves and go, “You know what, I am right. We did say this. I wrote it down here so that I know I’m not crazy, so that I don’t internalize this person’s story that I’m crazy or my memory is going or something like that. I need to set boundaries for myself so I can take care of myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s perfect. Thank you. And maybe if we back it up a little bit in terms of, before we even get to a conflict scenario, you’ve got a whole section in terms of strategies to prevent conflicts. And I was most intrigued by letting go of resentment and setting clear expectations. What are your top best practices for these two conflict-preventers?

Jeremy Pollack
Well, resentment is a tough one to let go of because when I talk about letting go of resentment, people often push back and say, “But if I stop resenting them, then they won,” or, “If I stop resenting them, it means either I’m saying they’re right or I’m not holding them accountable anymore,” or something like that.

And, really, resentment is like serving yourself poison. It’s not doing anything to the other person. It’s just hurting yourself. It’s just sort of a ball of energy that you’re holding onto. So, if you want to confront someone that you have rapport with, I think that’s important if you’re feeling resentful and you could do some reconciliation.

One exercise that I have people do sometimes is I do a writing exercise, especially if it’s not someone that they can actually do any kind of conflict process with, especially if it’s someone who maybe passed away, like they’re resentful of their father or their mother who’s not with us anymore, something like that. They’ll do a writing exercise where they actually write to the person, they actually write a letter to the person saying everything that’s in their heart, on their chest, everything that they really felt hurt about, etc., and they don’t send it, they just put it in their drawer. And then they write another letter from that person to themselves in a way that they think that they would like to hear from the other person.

So, whatever they would like to hear, “What would it sound like if they really heard you and they really wanted to resolve this, they really wanted to get back in a place of trust and care with you? What would that sound like? What would that letter response sound like?” And I have them write that letter. And it opens up the heart a little bit and then I have them write one final letter back to the person in response to that and, again, opening up their heart this time, being caring and potentially vulnerable. And so, doing some sort of writing exercise sometimes can help if that person is not available for it.

Setting expectations is really important to prevent resentment because, a lot of times, people have expectations that they never set with anyone, that they just assumed were there, so they hold someone else to their standards without getting an agreement on it, and then they create resentment in that way. So, I think it’s really important when you’re noticing you’re having conflicts with someone to sit down with them and to start kind of looking at, “What do you feel like are the standards or expectations here in our relationship, or in our organization, or in this workplace, or something?”

Let’s make sure we’re really clear and we’re aligned on that because, a lot of times, that process of setting expectations with someone will bring out how misaligned some of the things are, “I never knew you expected that of me,” or, “I think that’s unreasonable,” or, “Oh, you expect that. Okay, I can do that. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you wanted me to do that.” And so, that process of transparency and clarity is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, if you’re working with someone and you’re trying to follow all these best practices and you’re just not making much headway, like someone else just does not want to cooperate or play ball, how do you think about tough cases and when you want to kind of walk away and find an alternative?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, I think a lot of conflict resolution has to do with motivation. Every relationship, whether it’s a relationship with a company, with a boss, with a partner, with a spouse, every relationship has some cost benefit analysis. And the benefits, the value you get from the relationship has to outweigh, I think, by some measure, the cost of managing the relationship. In other words, the stress that you get from it.

So, if you have a really low stress relationship, you get a lot of value from it, your motivation to stay in that relationship is going to be high, and vice versa it’s going to be low. So, I sometimes work with folks and companies that, for instance, say, “I don’t want to resolve this conflict with this person because I don’t need to work with them, I don’t need to talk to them, there’s no downside of me just not having any conversation with them,” and yet the company goes, “No, they need to work together.”

So, this individual has very low motivation to resolve. And with low motivation, it’s going to be very tough for them to do some of the uncomfortable stuff that conflict resolution processes tend to bring people into. So, there’s a level of discomfort that you have to look at motivation. So, if someone says, “I’m just not motivated to resolve,” then sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll work with them and kind of understand, “Well, what are you motivated to do? Like, how do we reframe motivation? What do you want here? What kind of work life do you want, for instance? Or, what kind of life at home do you want? Paint a vision for me. Tell me how it would look.”

And we create a vision and we go, “What steps can we take to get there? Or, if those steps aren’t possible, then is this the right place for you? So, I ask them, “Is this the right place for you? Is this the right relationship? Is this the right organization for you to be in?” Sometimes, a lot of times, when they get to the point where there’s just no motivation to resolve, they can admit, “I’m not sure that this is the right thing.” And sometimes I’ve coached people out of relationships, out of their work situations, where they just didn’t feel confident in doing it but they really wanted to leave. And so, sometimes that’s where it’ll lead, they just need some help.

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

Jeremy Pollack
I would just say I’ll reiterate these two main buckets of conflict resolution when people are resolving conflicts – care and then solution. I just want to reiterate don’t skip the care part and jump straight to problem solving. Whenever possible, do the care part first, meaning listening to someone, validate them, let them know that you care, that you agree with some part, you can find merit in what they’re saying, and then open up the space for collaborative solution-building.

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

Jeremy Pollack
Well, I think the Robber’s Cave experiment by Sherif back in the 1950s was a seminal work in intergroup contact theory. I think that’s a really important work. And the whole field of intergroup contact has emerged from that. Basically, a seminal work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jeremy Pollack
Getting to Yes, right behind me. Getting to Yes is a really foundational book on negotiation and conflict resolution. I think that’s a really important one.

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

Jeremy Pollack
When I do coaching work, I just use Google Spreadsheet. I track all our progress for my coaching clients in there. I’m sure there are other platforms that are more robust but I love to use something like a spreadsheet to track progress with every coaching client I have so I know exactly what we’re doing, what action items we’re using, and what commitments they’re making.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jeremy Pollack
Meditation. Morning meditation.

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?

Jeremy Pollack
I have just a tendency to consistently kind of remind people to put care first, and that seems to resonate. Put care first.

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

Jeremy Pollack
You can go to our website PollackPeaceBuilding.com. I’m also at CoachJeremyPollack.com.

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

Jeremy Pollack
Final challenge to be awesome at your job, stay open-minded with people’s perspectives. Don’t think that your perspective is the only right one. There might be multiple right perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jeremy, this has been fun. I wish you much luck in all of your conflict resolving.

Jeremy Pollack
Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it.

Sep 23
0

705: Helping Others Change in Four Steps with Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson

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Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson break down their simple four-step process for encouraging others to change.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The critical question that opens others to change
  2. The best thing to do when a person doesn’t want to change
  3. The perils of giving positive feedback

About Peter & Howie

Peter Bregman is the CEO of Bregman Partners. He coaches, writes, teaches, and speaks, mostly about leadership and about life. His sweet spot is as a strategic thought partner to successful people who care about being exceptional leaders and stellar human beings. Peter is recognized as the #1 executive coach in the world by Leading Global Coaches, the bestselling author of five books, and host of the Bregman Leadership Podcast. His works frequently appear in Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Psychology Today, Forbes, CNN, and NPR.

Howie Jacobson, PhD, is an executive coach to clients ranging from startup founders to established and rising Fortune 100 leaders. He is director of coaching at Bregman Partners and head coach at the Healthy Minds Initiative, as well as host of the Plant Yourself Podcast. He’s written a bunch of books, and his mission includes helping kind and generous people grow their capability and scale their influence.

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Peter Bregman & Howie Jacobson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Peter and Howie, welcome to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Peter Bregman
Thanks so much. It’s great to be here.

Howie Jacobson
Ditto. Ditto.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to learn that it is, in fact, possible to change other people. Tell us, how did you reach this discovery?

Peter Bregman
It’s a truism, right? You hear it all the time, “You can’t change other people.” And, actually, one of the things that occurred to me is that every time someone says to you, “Hey, you can’t change other people. You can only change yourself,” they’re actually trying to change you. They’re almost always saying that because they’re trying to change something that you’re doing.

And both Howie and I, we change people for a living. That’s what we do when we’re coaching people. We’re helping them to make changes that they, otherwise, find difficult to make in their lives, and we’re making a difference. And so, Howie and I were just in a number of conversations, and thought to ourselves, “You know, let’s actually talk about this more widely, and let’s give people the tools to do it in a way that actually works.” Because it’s not that people don’t try to change each other, it’s just that they do it so poorly, and that there’s actual ways of doing it that work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then so what is sort of the big idea or core thesis associated with the book You Can Change Other People: The Four Steps to Help Your Colleagues, Employees– Even Family– Up Their Game? I guess one is that, first, it’s possible, but, fundamentally, how does it happen? Or, what are the missing ingredients that folks are overlooking?

Howie Jacobson
Yeah, so one of the key points is that when we approach people to change them, we often are upset, we’re judgmental, we’re critical, we know better than they do, and that approach actually creates tremendous resistance. And so, I’d say the key point of the book is instead of approaching people as a critic, approach them as an ally.

So, that’s actually the first step of the four-step process. When we approach someone as an ally, as we want the best for them, instead of coming across as we know better, their defenses don’t come up, and very often the changes that we’re hoping they make are changes that they would like to make themselves. So, what we’re doing, first and foremost, is not creating or fomenting or exaggerating their resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, could you give us some examples of how we can make that shift? Like, I guess the end destination is the same. We still want to get to the same place. But it’s sort of the stance, the posture, the vibe that we have with the other person. Can you sort of share some contrasts, like, “Hey, saying something like this is critic territory versus saying it like that is ally territory”?

Peter Bregman
Yeah, I think that the first step is even before that, in a way, which is to say, “How are you thinking about this? How are you approaching it?” Because, like Howie just said, almost always we’re annoyed. Like, the point at which we want to start changing people or helping people change is from a place of frustration and annoyance.

And so, the first step almost is, “How are you talking to yourself? How are you showing up in this dynamic and in this situation?” And if you’re saying, “That person is so annoying, and it’s so frustrating.” And in that frustration, finding the care behind it, underneath it, meaning that anytime you’re frustrated or angry about something, it’s because you care about something. There’s something you care about.

And, in some ways, that first step is to speak to yourself in a way that says, “I care about this person,” or, “I care about the outcome that we’re both trying to achieve, and I care enough to want to put some energy and effort into kind of helping it move in a certain direction, or helping them move in a certain direction.” And that’s really a first step.

Howie Jacobson
Yeah. So, you spoke also about the idea of, like, we’re trying to get to the same place. Maybe not, though. Because when we’re focused on, “Okay, I want my spouse to eat better,” and we’re going to do things that are going to try to lead them there, as opposed to what we really want to do is to ignite in them the qualities that allow them to change themselves for the better.

So, one of those, for example, is ownership. So, the more we’re pushing for it, the less space they have to say, “Yeah, this is something I want for myself.” We want them to have independent capability so that they have to develop it over time and be able to do what it is they have to do in various situations of increasing challenge.

So, if we’re really focused on enabling them with these and a couple of other qualities, then we’re going to go about it very differently. So, instead of saying, “Here’s what you should do,” and just go out and giving advice, we’re going to be very curious, like, “Hey, tell me about the situation. Tell me about the challenges you’re facing with eating healthy. Tell me what bothers you about your body right now that relates to food.”

Very often when we get people talking, they solve their own problems. And when we create the space for them to not feel judged, they can open up and become very creative.

Peter Bregman
And, Pete, I’ll just throw out one other thing, which is initiating that conversation is really important. And instead of just offering advice or criticism, or using the example that Howie gave, instead of just sort of saying, “Hey, I noticed you took that third cookie. Is that really the best decision given that you’re trying to lose weight?” to actually ask permission to engage in the conversation, to say, “Hey, that’s the third comment you’ve made about how you can’t stop eating. And I just noticed it, and I’m wondering, do you want to think this through together?” And they might say, “No, I’m not interested in thinking it through together,” in which case, you don’t have the opening to engage in the conversation and support them and help them change.

But, oftentimes, if you’re raising it in a way that’s uncritical, and then you’re able to say, “Hey, this thing that you’re struggling with, do you want to think it through together? I have some thoughts. But do you want to think it through together?” Their likelihood of saying, “Well, yeah, I’m happy to talk with you about it” increases their ownership in having the conversation and being part of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And then, let’s see, so we’re shifting from the critic to ally. And then, can you walk us through? You got four key steps, that’s the first one. Can you give us the overview and sort of dig into each of them a bit?

Howie Jacobson
Sure. So, the second step is once they’ve said, “Yeah, I’d love some help thinking this through,” is that’s the point in which we all just want to give them advice, like, “They have said yes. Great. Now, let me tell you all the things I know.” And instead of that, our approach is to immediately ask about an energizing outcome, an outcome that they want, because we’re still going to get into all the nitty-gritty and all the good, bad, and the ugly of the situation, but we want to frame it in terms of, “What do you want?”

Because when people are in problem mode, when they’re struggling, their brains, our brains, when we’re struggling tend to be very defensive. So, we’re looking at threat, we’re trying to avoid threat, as opposed to when we are looking for good things, looking for food, looking for opportunities, looking for mates, this is like evolutionary, biology, psychology 101, when we’re in opportunity mode, we see much more broadly, and we can act on opportunities, that when we’re in defensive mode, we don’t even see.

So, by immediately getting them to shift their thinking towards, “What do I really want here?” not “What am I trying to get away from?” we can open up a huge internal reservoir of creativity and optimism. So, that’s step two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Peter Bregman
Yeah, and I can jump in with step three. So, step three is the opportunity. So, in some ways, we’re starting the conversation by getting permission and really focusing on being their ally, then we’re identifying what is the outcome that they want. And then the third is, in this problem, there’s an opportunity. I don’t know what it is yet, they might not know what it is yet, but there’s an opportunity. And how do we find out what’s good about the problem that can guide us to finding an opportunity that doesn’t just solve the problem but makes us better off than we were before the problem?

So, if the problem brings us to a negative, and solving the problem brings us to zero, we’re going for positive, we’re saying, “How do you find an opportunity?” And I’ll give you an example of that, which is it’s actually an example I was thinking about today.

But I eat too much sugar, and so the problem is I eat too much sugar, I want to start eating less sugar. And one way of handling it, the issue is to just sort of say, “Okay, how do I stop eating sugar? Like, if I stopped eating sugar, then that would solve my problem.” But if you really ask questions, and when Howie uses this process with me, and Howie asks me a bunch of questions, one of the questions is, “What’s good about the sugar habit? Like, you have a sugar habit. What’s it doing for you? How is it helping you?” And I realized how it’s helping me is I’m way overtired, like, I’m working way too hard. I’m doing too much, and sugar keeps me going.

And so, maybe the problem I’m trying to solve isn’t, “How do I stop myself from eating sugar?” but the sugar problem is identifying an opportunity that I could use more rest in my life, like there’s a larger problem and a larger opportunity that the sugar habit is pointing to. And once I understand that, I can begin to solve for the opportunity of getting rest in my life. And by doing that, not only do I solve my sugar problem, but I solve a whole bunch of other problems that go along with my sugar problem.

So, that’s just one example of what is the opportunity that’s hidden in the problem. And then the fourth step is a plan, and it’s getting very, very specific, “What am I going to do? By when? How am I going to do it? How will I measure my success? How will I know that I have succeeded or haven’t succeeded? And how do I learn from the experiment that I’m going to be doing on sort of addressing this or finding this opportunity to achieve the outcome?”

So, if you think of the four steps, you’ve got being an ally and really being supportive and getting permission, identifying an outcome, finding the opportunity to achieve that outcome, and then identifying a path forward and ways of holding myself accountable in order to get there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, could you give us a couple examples of folks successfully changing other people, and then kind of walk through these four steps?

Peter Bregman
Sure. So, I’ll give you an example that we talked about in the book, and it’s an actual example. It’s a guy named Brian Gaffney who is CEO of Allianz Global Distributors, and he walked into an organization that was losing $30 million a year. And it had a leadership team in there, and he came in and he basically used this process, he used the process, in order to, with the same team he was working with beforehand, he came in and he turned the company around to a gain of $140 million. And there were all sorts of problems on the team. There were people who were like really salespeople who were smart but kind of sloppy and turning off other people, there were like all sorts of different people had different problems or challenges on the team.

And the first thing that he did was he would go in and, basically, identified where there was a larger opportunity, basically saying, “Look, we’re losing $30 million. That is not our intention. We cannot sustain ourselves as a business if we continue to lose $30 million,” and talking to the team, in general, to be able to say, “Are you willing to think with me about ways that you can change that will help turn around this company, and, also, to learn how to have these conversations with the people who report to you? Like, are you willing to do that?”

“Because if you’re not willing to do that, we’re going to continue to lose $30 million, and that’s not going to help any of our bonuses. So, there’s certainly motivation to do it. That said, I still need to know that you’re willing to do it because I could tell you plenty of examples where people are losing $30 million and the company goes bankrupt because they don’t make changes in the team.”

So, to a T, everybody said, “Yeah,” but that doesn’t mean that they know what to do and how to change. So, now, Brian is in this role where he has to help all of the leaders in the organization make certain changes. So, step one is he’s got their permission. Step two is identifying the outcome, and, organizationally, there’s a big outcome. The outcome is to become profitable, that’s organizationally. But individually, the outcome is going to be different for each person because each person is struggling in a different kind of way. So, it’s having a very specific conversation with each person, and saying, “What is the outcome that you’re going for?”

And I think one of Brian’s great successes is he didn’t leave it at a mild outcome. He kept raising the bar and encouraging people to raise the bar so, for example, in the example I gave beforehand, which is someone who was sort of smart but, literally, sloppy, they showed up in a sloppy way, they presented poorly. That person says, “Okay, I want to not be sloppy.” “Well, that’s solving the problem. But what’s going on, like what’s the real outcome you want? The real outcome you want is to have an incredibly impactful presence when you’re in a room with a number of people so that you move the room. That’s the goal. Yes, not being sloppy is part of it but that’s not the goal. The goal is to have the kind of presence that moves the room.”

Great. So, now, let’s look at where are the opportunities to help you grow that capability, and it has to do with feedback from other people, it has to do with engaging people in a different kind of way, and then they can work through and work through, “How do we explore and identify the sloppiness in dress, and sloppiness in style, and sloppiness in approach becomes this trigger that says, ‘Okay, so what do I have to do to have the kind of impact that moves a room?’”

And, yes, the person ends up cleaning up how they present but they also begin to think about their audience, they begin to think about, “Who are these people I’m presenting to? And what is it that they need? Not just what do they need to see in me, but what are they longing for?” Like, the whole mentality of this person started changing to go from living in their own kind of world of brilliance to thinking about their audience. And their opportunity was to think through, “How do I serve the need of the clients that I’m trying to serve?”

And then it was being very, very accountable about saying, “What are the challenges that we’re facing? And what are the opportunities that we have and specific milestones and benchmarks for making the kinds of sales that we want to make?” But it’s all based in the outcome of having an impact on your clients in a certain kind of way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. Well, so digging into each of these in some depth, I’m curious, when it comes to getting the permission, in your experience, how often do people say yes? And what do you do if they say no?

Howie Jacobson
Well, one of the things you have to do is you don’t ask a question you’re not willing to hear any answer to. So, if you’re not willing to hear, “No, I don’t want to work with you,” then don’t ask the question because then you’re just trying to force an outcome in which we saw that any kind of forcing on our part makes it less likely. So, we’re really talking about best odds rather than some sort of Svengali Mesmer technique that’s going to be manipulative and gets them exactly where we want them to go.

So, the first is be willing to have people say, “No, I don’t want to engage.” Saying the best way to increase the odds is for someone to feel like you have their best interest at heart. And so, one of the things as coaches, we learn, is that our first thought about what someone needs is almost, always invariably wrong. Like, someone will talk to me, and I’ll go, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen this before. I know exactly what’s going on here. I’ve solved this a hundred times. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut so I’ll be a good coach but I really know the answer, and I’m going to get them there.”

And three minutes later, I’m like, “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t open my mouth because I had no idea, neither did they, but the space of exploration opened it up.” So, to be willing to say, like, “I want the best for you. I want you to have ownership of your life. I want you to have independent capability to chase the things, the outcomes that you want and achieve them. I want you to have the emotional courage to make tough decisions and stick by them when the going gets rough. And I want you to be able to do all that well into the future when we don’t know what the future might hold.”

So, if I’m trying to get someone to eat a certain way, or to start exercising, or to stop interrupting in a meeting, it’s my agenda. But one of the things the book really believes in is we basically trust other human beings to know what’s best for them, and then if we open up the space for them to take ownership over their lives and to achieve the outcomes they want, that that’s probably good for everyone.

Peter Bregman
A hundred percent, and I’m thinking about something as you’re saying this. And, Pete, your question is a great question because there is some magic in asking permission not just for the person who gets to say yes or no, but for you. Because if I’m frustrated with your behavior, and it’s just sitting in my mind and I’m annoyed and I’m frustrated, and I don’t ask permission and I just start giving you advice, and you get pissed off and you don’t accept my advice or you tell me to mind my own business, I leave both more pissed off, you leave pissed off, we’ve hurt our relationship.

But if I ask you, “Hey, look, I’ve noticed this thing, and are you open to thinking about it with me? Or, do you want some of my help?” If you say no, for me, it separates me from an obligation to impact you. Like, you’ve said, “I don’t want your help.” Now, I know, I understand the dynamic now. Now, I might be frustrated by that but I’m probably not going to keep trying to change you.

Now, there are sometimes when you have positional power. If you’re a boss, and you say, “Hey, if you want my help in thinking through how to be more effective in a meeting,” and the person says no, but they still do poorly in a meeting, ultimately, there’s going to be consequences. That’s just the reality of a corporate organizational life, which is, “If I have positional power over you, and you’re my employee and you’re not performing, there’s going to be consequences to that non-performance.”

But if I offered help and you say no, you are now really accountable for your behavior, and I am now really not accountable for your behavior, and it creates a lot of clarity of who’s responsible for what, which keeps things very, very clean. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Howie Jacobson
Yeah, and another thing is when somebody says no, and you accept that with grace, you might be confounding them a little bit. Like, if you’ve been trying to change them for years, and they say, “No, I’m not interested,” and you give up, you say, “Okay, cool.” They’re like, “Huh, did they just do that? That’s different.” And you could play the long game, and, at some point, they might start trusting that you’re not trying to force them to change. So, the very act of saying no can open the path for a later yes.

Peter Bregman
I’ll give you a very precise example, which is what happens with my daughter. Like, I would give my daughter all sorts of advice, and I was sort of giving the cookie example, and I’ve talked a lot about sugar, so now you know what my habits are. But she had eaten a whole bunch of cookies, and she was complaining about it, and I said, “Do you want my help?” And she said, “No, no, I’m good,” and I said, “Okay,” and I didn’t mention it again.

And then she comes back, and she goes, “Hey, but I would like to talk to you about it now.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, that’s great. I’m happy to talk to you about it now.” But it was her choice, like it wasn’t dad forcing something on her. It was her saying, “Hey, maybe dad can help here.” And that’s really powerful. Now, I’m responding to her requests as opposed to being a naggy dad.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. So, then we talked about the permission piece of things. And then I’d love it when we talk about, could you just layer on the examples associated with the energizing outcome? Because I hear you in terms of, “Hey, stop being sloppy” is not nearly as energizing as “Have a commanding presence in a room,” like, “Ooh, yeah, I like that.” So, could you give us a few more examples rapid fire so we can go, “Oh, okay, I see the difference between a not-so energizing versus a quite so energizing outcome”?

Howie Jacobson
Yeah. So, a friend of mine had lost like almost 200 pounds, and he started running marathons, and he contacted me because he was starting to gain weight back, not significant but five or ten pounds, and his whole thing was like, “I don’t want to be fat again. I’m not going back there and I’m scared because I’m starting to let things into my diet a little bit.” And we had a conversation, and the reason he wants to keep the weight off is he wants to be a better runner.

And so, his energizing outcome was, “I’m an athlete.” He’d never been an athlete, he never played sports in school, but now in his late 40s, he started seeing himself as an athlete, and so that was an energizing outcome. And to be an athlete, he was going to eat and move and live his life in such a way that he wasn’t going to be gaining that weight back, but it wasn’t about his relationship with the scale, trying to go two pounds up, two pounds down, which was, for anyone, can be a very annoying demanding relationship with very little benefit. But becoming an athlete, and seeing his identity as someone, something he never thought he could be, that really excited him and it made it much easier for him to do all those same actions.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Let’s hear another.

Peter Bregman
I’ll give you one that is a little bit of a complicated process but is really, really powerful, which is a guy that I was coaching, who was very, very frustrated with the way his boss’ boss was acting. His boss’ boss was getting aggressive and promised things that he felt like, “It wasn’t really something that we’d be able to deliver,” and it was like a difficult situation.

And so, he came in, and the problem was, “I’ve got this boss’ boss who’s getting in my way, and I would really like him to just go away. Like, how do I get out from under this?” And as we thought about, “What is the outcome that you really want?” and this will drive into the next step, too, which is opportunity, but, “What is the outcome you really want?”

It’s got nothing to do with the boss, “The outcome I want is to be a powerful actor in my own world and to be able to make the changes and the moves, organizationally, that I think are going to be most effective for the organization, and do it with integrity. Like, that’s the outcome I want. Like, I want power. I don’t want to be hamstrung by this manager,” the manager’s manager, in a sense, “And I don’t want to feel like my integrity is in question but I really want the freedom to deliver for my customers the way I want to deliver for my customers.”

Okay, great. So, now, it’s not about the manager’s manager anymore. Now, that problem still exists and we’re not going to ignore it, but, “The outcome is how I want to show up in the business, how I want to show up as a leader, how I want to show up as a contributor in the business.” And that’s an outcome that’s exciting, like, “Well, I’m going to have some power in how I show up. I’m excited about that.”

So, I can give you other outcomes, but do you want me to jump into the opportunity here, like where the opportunity falls in? Because, to me, I found this to be a fascinating one. It turns out that the same characteristics of that boss’ boss who was aggressive, and out there, and shooting from the hip, and willing to make promises, that there were things about those behaviors that were potentially very, very damaging, and there are ways in which this person that I was coaching was so far removed from those kinds of behaviors that he wasn’t able to have an impact.

Meaning, he wasn’t making commitments until he was a million percent sure that these were the right commitments to make, that he was afraid of being too aggressive, that these attributes that he saw as so negative in his manager’s manager were attributes that he was missing in his own life, and was making it harder for him to show up.

So, now, it turns out that this problem that he was trying to solve turns out to be a key element to how he’s going to achieve his outcome, which is, “I don’t have to get rid of my manager’s manager or avoid him or try to work around him. I actually have something to learn from him. And it doesn’t mean that I’m going to lose my integrity, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to agree with everything he says, but there’s something about his behavior that I find alienating that can really help me to be successful. And because I find it alienating, I’m staying as far away from him as I can, and it’s limiting my own growth.”

“And so, I actually am now going to get into a little bit of a development relationship with him, which now is exciting because this behavior that was so infuriating to me beforehand, and so frustrating and alienating beforehand, I’m realizing, wow, I have an opportunity to learn something from this. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to take on his personality but I’ve got something I can learn here, and that’s kind of exciting when I think about how it might help me to achieve the outcome I want to achieve, which is to have more impact on the business.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And the last step, create the plan, you’ve used the phrase create a level-10 plan. What does that mean? And what makes a plan level 10 versus something lesser?

Howie Jacobson
Yeah. So, level 10 is our way of saying, “I want the person who is going to commit to the plan to say, when I ask, ‘How confident are you that you will try this plan?’ they’ll say, ‘Ten.’” Because, very often, what happens is we can get people to think of wonderful things to do, and, “Oh, that would be great. And, yes, I’m so excited,” and we never ask them, like, “How confident are you?”

So, to go into it, like think about the next time you’re going to have say no to a cookie, Pete, or the next time the guy you were just talking about has to have a development conversation with the manager’s manager, “How confident are you that you’re going to actually do it?” And we then take people to think about what’s that moment, and really like, “Yeah, no, I probably wouldn’t,” or, “That’s a step too hard,” so then we can say, “Okay. Well, let’s think about the rungs of the ladder. Can we do something easier?” Because momentum and motivation come from confidence, and confidence comes from experience.

So, one of the things we’re helping people do, one of the four attributes we’re looking for is this emotional courage. And so, we want people to challenge themselves but we don’t want them to have something that they really don’t think they’re going to do because the best predictor of whether you’re going to do something, aside from whether you want to do it, is whether you think you can. So, that’s why we say level 10, where we want to make sure that we’re offering people a path forward that they are willing to try because they think they can succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
And, zooming out a bit from this, I mean, sort of across the four steps, what are the top things that we shouldn’t do? Any key phrases not to say? I’m already kind of gathering that it’s like, “You always do this. What’s wrong with you? Get your act together.” All those things are probably incompatible with your ethos and model here. But any other choice words or phrases to embrace or avoid?

Peter Bregman
Sure. I think anytime you’re going to give someone advice that’s not requested, and it took me a long time to learn this because people pay me a lot of money to give them advice. Like, I’ve built a really good business on giving people advice. So, when I try to give advice to people, like in my family who are not asking me for advice, I find it’s not appreciated the same way I would expect it and want it to be appreciated. So, anytime, like to really hold off on criticizing people or giving them advice or even suggestions, unless they’re asking for it, is really helpful to do, and that means sort of managing and controlling your own emotions around kind of what you’re seeing and what you want to have happen.

Another thing is, and this sort of seems obvious and yet it’s very hard to hold back, sort of snide passive-aggressive comments, like, those are not very helpful. Or, even little comments, like, “Oh, huh, so you’re eating another cookie?” Like, not helpful. Commenting on your behavior is probably not going to have the impact that you wanted to have. If you comment on someone’s behavior, like giving them a narrative, “Oh, I see you went for seconds,” or, “I noticed, oh, you’re talking again in the meeting. Another comment from John.” Those things lead to shame, and shame is an inhibitor of change.

So, if I feel shame about something, it’s counterintuitive. If I feel shame about something, I’m probably going to deny that I’m doing it and I’m going to end up keep doing it because we will do almost anything not to feel shame. And so much of the way we try to change people, often elicits shame. And so, any kind of comment that is offered without permission, I would say don’t share.

Howie Jacobson
And there’s a flipside to that, which is we think so we’re not going to say negative derogatory things, that we want to say positive upbeat complimentary things, and that can be dangerous. If someone comes up, we’re working on the plan part, and we’re helping them identify options for what they could do, and they say one and it’s the one we’re thinking of, we could say, “Oh, that’s great. That’s terrific.” We’ve just shut them down, they’re not going to think of other ones because now they’re afraid, “Well, if I say another one, then he might not like it as much.”

So, we want to make sure it’s not our agenda that’s driving it, and we want to appreciate their willingness, their courage, their willingness to be in the process with us, but we want to not evaluate. And the flipside of a negative evaluation is a positive evaluation which still puts us in charge.

Peter Bregman
And to your question, Pete, about let’s keep it really simple, what do you say or you don’t say. That’s where the four steps come in. It’s like it’s actually very simple. Ask permission,  , like, “Hey, do you want to talk about this? Or, can we talk about this?” If they say no, it’s a non-starter. If they say, “Yeah, I’d love to,” then the only thing you’re saying is, “What’s the outcome you want here? What are you going for? What are you looking for? What, ideally, would you want as an outcome?”

And then you’re just engaging in a conversation about how they might be able to get there. We make things more complicated than it needs to be in many ways, and it’s very simple. Ask permission. Identify where you’re headed, what the outcome is. And then brainstorm ways of getting there and opportunities that your problem might be offering you.

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

Peter Bregman
I think the only thing I would want to mention is that this is…I think changing other people gets a bad rap. As soon as you say, “You can change other people,” you’re seen as possibly as manipulative or like you’re controlling, and I honestly feel like changing other people, helping them make the kinds of changes that they struggle with and are unable to make on their own, is the most gracious, kind, caring, loving thing that we can do.

And the reason Howie and I wrote this book is because to give people the skill, the capability to skillfully help others make changes that they struggle with in their life. The world is a better place if we’re able to do that with each other. So, I just wanted to kind of share that.

Howie Jacobson
Yeah. And we talk a lot about the litmus test of whether you were successful is whether the person thanks you afterwards, like they’re really grateful for the conversation. It’s the opposite of half nelson-ing them into compliance.

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

Peter Bregman
One of my favorite quotes of all time is Frederick Buechner, the theologian, who wrote, “Your vocation in life,” or the work that you should do, your calling, “is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” Like, find that intersection of your greatest joy meeting the world’s greatest need, and spend your time there. I love that quote.

Howie Jacobson
One that’s come to recently is very much related to the book is a Joseph Campbell quote, he says, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” So, all the places that I say, I wake up and I say, “Ah, I wish this wasn’t happening,” to look at it again and say, “What can I make of this? How is this an opportunity for me to become a better person?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Peter Bregman
I’m going to be a little disappointing here but almost all of…I mean, I read a ton of books for my podcast, but my favorite books, or I make a habit of reading what my children are reading, and my children are really into like YA fantasy fiction, and the Crooked Kingdom is the last thing that I read. My kids often will tell me, “There’s a lot of leadership in these books. You should have the authors of these YA fiction fantasy books on your podcast.” And I’m like, “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that someday.”

But I love reading what my kids are reading.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you.

Howie Jacobson
And, for me, the book that’s had the biggest impact on me over the past couple of years is Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta, and the subtitle is “How Indigenous Wisdom Can Save the World.” And it’s an indigenous Australian philosopher and craftsman talking about Western civilization from his perspective and how it’s unsustainable and the lessons we need to learn. And it’s a very beautifully insidious book. It got inside my head, and I’m now seeing all of our problems from this other perspective. So, I found it very helpful.

Peter Bregman
Howie, you are so much more profound and sophisticated than I am.

Howie Jacobson
I wish I had known what you were going to say. I didn’t have to go that high to beat it.

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

Peter Bregman
Honestly, like I got to tell you, the tool is my phone but I use it in a very, very different way than 90% of the people, which is I actually use it to make phone calls. Like, I love, I just pick up the phone and I call my clients and we’re in this brief conversation, even if it’s a 10-minute conversation, and I just…I really love the phone for the use that I grew up, knowing what it’s for and having real conversations.

Howie Jacobson
My tool right now is my adjustable height desk.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Howie Jacobson
I do different things at different heights, I found. Like, I write at one height, I podcast to the second height, I do admit in the third height.

Pete Mockaitis
Those are fun for sure. Well, do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Peter Bregman
My final call to action would be to, and do it now as you’re listening to this podcast, think of one person in your life who could really benefit from your support, like one person, and start to try to use this stuff. Take that first step and ask permission if you can have the conversation with them because you will be awesome in your job if you help the people around you be awesome at their jobs. And so often, we think we’re struggling to be awesome at our jobs despite the people around us. And I think we would be far more awesome in our jobs if we can help all of them be more successful, we’ll be more successful as a result.

Howie Jacobson
Yeah, I want to leave that right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, Howie, Peter, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of success and positive vibes as you’re changing other people.

Howie Jacobson
Thank you.

Peter Bregman
Thank you, Pete. Such a pleasure being on with you.

Sep 13
0

702: Building the Courage to Speak Up and Stand Out at Work with Jim Detert

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Jim Detert says: "Advocacy isn't just yelling my conclusion more loudly. It's helping people see why I came to that conclusion."

Jim Detert discusses how to build your courage to stand out and influence.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why acting courageously is easier than you think
  2. The four fears that keep us from acting courageously
  3. The most effective way to get others to listen to you

About Jim

Jim Detert (PhD, Harvard) is the John L. Colley Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Detert’s research focuses on employee voice and other forms of workplace courage, experiential leadership development, and ethical decision-making and behavior. His research has won several academic best-paper awards, and his teaching and curriculum development have also won multiple awards at UVA and Cornell.

Resources Mentioned

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Jim Detert Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jim, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jim Detert
It’s great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting about courage at work. And I’d love to hear from you upfront, what was a time you really had to muster up some courage at work?

Jim Detert
Well, as a tenured professor, it’s actually kind of laughable perhaps to talk about courage at work. I have a real privilege of a type of job security most people don’t have. So, I would say, most of the times I’ve had to muster up courage at work in the spirit of challenging long-standing tradition. We’re pretty slow to change.

And so, when I was dean, for example, of our executive MBA program, I found myself repeatedly responding to statements that we can’t do something, with statements of, “By ‘I can’t do something’ do you mean it’s illegal or immoral, or simply that we haven’t done it in the past and prefer not to?” Those, frankly, are so numerous that I won’t bore listeners with all the specific examples of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that is a nice helpful distinction to put front and center there. Cool. All right. Well, so that’s your personal experience. And how about your research, any particularly counterintuitive or surprising discoveries you’ve made about courage at work over your research career?

Jim Detert
Well, I think a few insights that have emerged that might seem counterintuitive, or at least they’re counter to the narrative. So, for example, I think we have a myth, in fact, I know we have a myth that courage is some kind of in-born trait or capacity that a few possess but most don’t. And having studied, literally, thousands of individual actors and acts of courage, I can tell you that there is no magic gene, there is no magic personality trait, background experience. People who step up and do the right thing at work, when they could and should, very tremendously in every dimension you and I can name. So, one sort of insight or sort of myth-busting for me has been it is not about a personal type. It is about a personal choice.

I think related to that is that people talk about courageous action as if these folks were sort of born ready or it was easy but, in fact, when you study folks, when they’re talking about John Lewis, for example, in the political realm or so many people I’ve studied in more regular kinds of workplaces, what you realize is that actually what looks like this natural confidence comes from hard work, years of practice, years of trying things, learning how to be more effective. So, that’s a second takeaway, is that this is like any skill. It’s developed through practice and commitment.

Maybe one insight or aha about the process itself is we think a lot about the moment when somebody speaks up or steps up. That’s the thing we remember and tend to pass on through narrative. But it turns out that what seems to make a difference in many cases for how those moments go is the preparation work and the things people do before those acts, and then, maybe most surprisingly, what they do after. So, skillful actors don’t just manage the moment well. They’re really good about after the fact, following up when things seem to have gone well, getting commitments, securing resources.

And when things didn’t go so well, they’re courageous enough to go have yet another difficult conversation, and say, “Hey, you look upset or angry or your body language suggests that you weren’t onboard. Can we talk about that?” And I think that follow-up is something we don’t think much at all about because we’re so focused on that big-bang moment itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing, yes. So, you’re right, in terms of as we just think about being courageous, like what comes to mind is exactly that, those moments of stepping up, saying something unpopular, or challenging the status quo in some way. And so, that’s a good thought in terms of there really is some private work going on either internally in their own brains or sort of afterwards one-on-one in the mix. Well, thanks for those. And maybe zooming out a bit, so your book Choosing Courage, what’s the central thesis here?

Jim Detert
The central thesis, I guess, going back to where we started, is really that courage is a personal choice and it’s a responsibility, and it helps to think not about courage as if it’s some sort of property. I often say, if you do an autopsy of somebody, you won’t find some stock of courage somewhere in the body. There is no such thing. So, it helps to think about courageous action.

And once you say it’s about whether you do something in those critical moments, you then can assume personal responsibility. And, in a sense, the thesis is that we don’t allow ourselves to say that any other virtue is just a responsibility of some, or that we should do some of the time. If you think about fairness or moderation or kindness, so many other principal or cardinal virtues, those aren’t just the responsibility of one of my ten coworkers, or myself, one of ten opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m not really an honest person, Jim. You know that. I leave that to the other guys. They’re often honest. That’s good enough for me.”

Jim Detert
The question, right, is, “Why have we allowed that?” We wouldn’t say that about any of these other traits, these virtues, so why do we allow that in the realm of courage? Frankly, I think we let ourselves off the hook too frequently. And part of it is because we’re afraid, and so the book talks a lot about how to address fears, and part of it is because we’re not very skilled, and so we see so many screw ups in ourself and others when people do try to behave courageously, that we conclude, “It’s just too dangerous.”

And so, the book is fundamentally about saying, “Hey, you got to choose your moments, but then you have to be willing to take on some risks and you have to be willing to do the work to increase your competency.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so, Jim, it’s interesting, we’re talking about virtue, and I’m thinking about Aristotle and how the pursuit of the good life is good in and of itself, and brings about happiness and such. But just to get mercenary for a second, is it in professionals’ best interest to choose courage? Will that help them be more awesome and advance their jobs? Or is it better to play it safe? How do you think about that?

Jim Detert
So, I think there’s basically two answers to that question. First of all, it depends on your goals. If your goals are basically to just get ahead, potentially as quickly as possible, then, frankly, you and I know there are lots of organizations where the definition of being awesome at your job is keeping your head down, doing what you’re told, and just delivering. And in that regard, you could say choosing courage in the short run, not a great idea.

On the other hand, if you say, “I want to live of life where I felt I had agency, where I was authentic, I was true to myself, l lived my values,” then, hell, yeah, it’s the right choice to make. Another way to think about it is, “Over what time horizon?” So, if you’re talking about whether, “Choosing courage will necessarily put me in line first for the next promotion,” well, maybe, maybe not. But when you start to look at a longer-time horizon, like, “Will I be proud of the legacy I’m creating? Will others really remember me and want to stand with me? Will I have long-term regrets or not?” that’s when this choice is so critical.

If you look at the regret literature, for example, it’s pretty well-established that people, by a large margin, tend to regret inactions, things they think they should’ve done and didn’t than actions they took that didn’t go well. This is true even in people who suffer pretty big consequences – whistleblowers, for example. Almost none of them say they regret doing it.

So, what I would say to listeners is it depends. If you’re talking about how to be most popular or get ahead tomorrow, well, sticking your neck out is not always the best approach. If you’re talking about living what you or I or Aristotle or anybody else would call the good life, then I’d say, yeah, you got to choose courage sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d imagine, with sort of any measure of prudent risk-taking and say, “I’m going to take on this big project or responsibility or duty or opportunity where the outcome is uncertain,” I think that a level of that is essential for a career to advance, otherwise you don’t seem that special, it’s like, “Okay, you did your job within the realm of ordinary responsibilities. You didn’t deliver near really cool sort of noteworthy improvements, so.”

Jim Detert
Yeah. Okay, I would say if we’re really honest there, a few paths probably to eventually standing up. One, of course, is to be the absolutely best political player. Attach yourself to the most important people and play their game and you’ll get ahead to some degree. Now, for those of us who find that approach distasteful in a variety of ways, I think you’re right, you have to stand out eventually and with some consistency in other ways. And that’s where there’s such a difference between just being courageous and being competently courageous.

My book is titled Choosing Courage. It many respects, it should’ve been titled Choosing Competent Courage because, indeed, the route to success is not just speaking up or speaking out, pushing back against every possible thing you could in offensive language or with terrible emotional valence. It’s about doing those things in ways, to your point, to help you stand out positively. Because not just did you point out a problem, a path forward, a way to expand a market, a creative idea, but you did it in a way that those above you could hear, that they weren’t offended by. Because, at the end of the day, you can stand out in positive or negative ways. And what you’re referring to is how to stand out in positive ways, and that’s about skills when you behave courageously.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, we’re talking a lot about courage and standing up, standing out, taking risks, speaking up. Could you make it all the more real for us in terms of some examples of common places where courageous acts make all the difference at work, or where people often shy away? Kind of what specific kinds of moments are we talking about here?

Jim Detert
So, there are a few sorts of prototypical types of acts that if you sample thousands of people, as I have, say, 75% or more will say, “Yeah, unfortunately, these behaviors are moderately courageous or more.” The most obvious type of behavior, set of behaviors, are what I call truth to power behaviors. So, these are challenging your boss, or skip-level bosses. It could be about policies or practices. It could be about interpersonal behaviors that are offensive or hurtful. It could be about actually illegal or unethical things. It can be about going to bat for your own subordinates to people above you. So, lots of truth to power behaviors.

Somewhat surprising, going back to that conversation, I was surprised to the degree to which when I just asked people, “Tell me about a behavior at work that would be courageous,” I expected that everybody would say truth to power type behaviors. What I wasn’t prepared for was the frequency of people talking about how hard it was to have honest conversations with peers or even have honest conversations or give difficult feedback to subordinates. And the reason I think that was originally surprising to me is I was thinking primarily of risks in terms of economic or career consequences, “If it doesn’t go well, my promotion, my pay, my future here is at stake.”

It turns out, people have a few fundamental fears, and that’s only one of them. People are also highly afraid of social consequences. If you think about it, it makes sense. We’ve evolved in small clans, bands, tribes, and our daily tasks was survival. And if you got ostracized from your group, you were going to die, and you were going to die in short order. And so, it’s not illogical that even though that’s not our environment today, evolutionarily, we’re still programmed to be hugely afraid of being ostracized, to have social consequences.

We also hate psychological risks. We say, “Why don’t people step up and try a new task or take a new job or be more innovative?” The answer there is often they don’t want to look stupid. They don’t want to feel embarrassed. They don’t want to see self-doubt creep in. And so, there’s actually this huge range of behaviors that’s not just about challenging power. It’s about difficult interpersonal situations with peers, subordinates, external partners. It’s about being innovative.

I developed an index of the most common behaviors I heard about from thousands of people, and there’s 35 different behaviors. And many of them, you would probably say, “Gosh, for a professional or a manager, isn’t that just doing your job?” And I’d say, “Yeah, it is, but these things have been surprisingly infrequently.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I love this. So, categories of fears: economic risk, “Might lose my job or money or promotion”; social risk, “Folks will not like me, shun me, ostracize me”; psychological risk, “I might feel stupid or embarrassed if I screw this up and look real dumb.” Are those kinds of the three categories or are there some more there?

Jim Detert
Well, the fourth one, which is real in many contexts I didn’t mention, is physical. If you go back 2,000 years of courage-writing, the vast history of courage-writing was about military contexts. And sure enough, there are still, in military, firefighting, police work, plenty of other settings that come to mind, they’re so physical risks. And even, frankly, I was surprised the degree to which folks who work in any sort of service occupation – bartenders, waiters, customer service – actually report cases of being physically assaulted, accosted, threatened with a weapon, so there’s physical risks also that some people face.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And these 35 behaviors, can you tell us what sort of tops the list in terms of like one, two, three?

Jim Detert
So, in terms of level of courageousness, not surprisingly, those physical risks. So, jumping into the middle of imminent physical risks or harm is number one. What’s surprising, though, is that there are several other behaviors that are statistically no different in terms of how courageous they’re seen as being. These are things like being willing to challenge bosses or skip-level bosses about unethical or illegal behaviors, quitting a job on principle. There are actually several, more available to all of us, kinds of jobs that are actually seen as just as courageous as these physical risks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So, that’s the lay of the land. Now, Jim, tell us, if we think we want or need or should do something, and we feel scared about doing it, walk us through it, how do we go about choosing competent courage?

Jim Detert
So, let’s talk just briefly about what you would do before you would take that specific action, then sort of the moment itself, and then what you would do after. So, before. Some people say, “Hey, I’m not ready to take this specific act,” and I say, “That’s fine but you can still work on it every day.” And they say, “What does that mean?”

Well, what it means is the reception you’re going to get to that challenge you issue is, in part, based on the content of the issue. Is that a highly sensitive threatening issue to the boss? But it’s also going to depend on the impression that boss has already formed of you. Does that boss think you’re benevolent? In other words, is the reason you’re speaking up because you actually care about him and others in the organization, or is it because you’re self-interested and just trying to get ahead?

And the boss is also going to ask himself or herself, implicitly, “Hey, if I listen to Jim or Pete, and give them resources or take action they’re suggesting, are they competent, can they do it? Can they make good use of these resources?” And so, every day, we are creating in others, perceptions of whether we’re warm and competent, and that’s really sort of setting the stage, showing people we are fair, we’re emotionally intelligent, on a regular basis sets the stage. So, those things you can be doing every day.

Another thing is the question of, “Is this really the right issue? And is it really the right battle and the right time?” So, if you work in an organization, any organization I’ve ever studied, you could pick something to speak up about every single day but most of them are not truly important to you and don’t make a huge difference. And so, having the skill to sort of suss out what are critical to your core values and to your objectives, and which are sort of tertiary issues, that’s really important.

A woman I work with, Tawana Burnett at Facebook, African-American female leader, really a spectacular leader, and she’s one of the first 20 black females at Facebook, and she said, “Look, if I was going to speak up every single time somebody said something that was inappropriate or insensitive based on race or gender, I’d be doing it every day, but I also would quickly become ineffective because people would stop listening to me.”

And so, she said, “Look, my core value, my core objective is that we have to get more black females into leadership roles, senior leadership roles, because only then will things really change.” So, her rule is, “When things offend me, I ask myself, ‘Is this about the hiring, evaluation, or promotion of black females?’ And if it is, I speak up because we’re not going to get where we need to go if I don’t. If it’s about other things, I may choose to let it go.” So, it’s really about sort of choosing wisely.

Then there’s the moment itself. That’s about what you say, where you say it, how you say it, with what emotional tone, and I’ll give just one specific sort of general piece of advice here. All of us, when asked or when thinking about, like, “I’m going to go for it on this issue,” our first instinct is going to be to say the matter, present the issue, try to give the persuasive remarks from the perspective that’s compelling to us. After all, it’s our brain in which we’re concocting the story, the argument, the pitch, and so our tendency is going to be to frame it in a way that works for us. Often, that’s exactly wrong because if you already control the behavior of the other person or the resources the other person controls, you don’t need to do this anyway.

And so, imagine, for example, that I work for you or with you, and you are really compelled by things that affect us economically, that hit the bottom line, and you really are sensitive to threats or risks to our wellbeing or performance. So, you care about the money and you care about threats. But I come in pitching this great new idea to you, and I’m talking about how it fits with our values and it’s so culturally aligned with who we are, and how it’s such an opportunity, and that opportunity framing and cultural framing doesn’t resonate for you at all because I failed to mention the economic reality or the potential threats if we don’t do this.

And so, people have to remember that it’s the target’s ability to hear and respond well to what you’re saying that makes all the difference. And my book talks about lots and lots of specific strategies for achieving that, but the high-level concept is you got to speak to the target. And then as we started with, I mentioned the importance of following up, whether things have gone well and you’re securing additional resources or timelines, or whether they haven’t gone so well and you’re trying to mend fences, that’s really important, too.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, when it comes to the framing, I would like to hear some of the specific tidbits there. So, do you have some archetypes or categories of frames, so values, economic? Those sounded nice in terms of, yeah, those have very different flavors to them. Any others that come to mind?

Jim Detert
So, there are some other sort of broader frames. For example, I versus we, or sort of win-win versus win-loss. I think what we often fail to remember, we know this but we fail to remember it in the moment, is that when you’re telling somebody why they should do something differently, or you’re pitching your idea, part of what they’re hearing is, as the recipient is, “Oh, you’re saying I’m bad, or my idea or current practice is inferior,” or, “Oh, you want to do this,” or, “You look good and I look like a fool.” And so, framing that helps people understand, “I don’t want to replace or win at your expense. I want to take what you’ve done to the next level. I want to be the scout out front who then brings us all along together. I want to expand the pie for everyone.”

So, helping people be able to hear what you’re saying because they really think you’re on their side, and that you’re advancing excellence rather than beating something down in a win-loss, that’s a huge element of positive framing. And then, frankly, there are lots of just small things we inadvertently say. We can have sort of a beautiful set of data compiled and we can present evidence and solutions, and in just a couple small words, we can screw things up.

We often follow, for example, into the trap of naïve realism, which is simply this idea that there’s just one reality out there, and it just happens to be, “The one that I see. So, if you don’t see it my way, you’re dumb.” And when we unconsciously operate that way, we’ll say things like, “Well, since it’s so obvious that this is the case,” or, “Since this is so unambiguous,” “Since it’s so clear to everybody,” “Since it’s unquestionably the case.” Well, the effect of words like unambiguous, or so clear, or unquestionably, is essentially to say, “If you have any questions or doubts or see it any differently, you’re a dummy or you’re self-interested.”

So, learning to speak with less certainty, learning to avoid other certain phrases, I call them frequency words. My wife and I still joke, 25 years in, how often we would get distracted from the actual content of what one or the other of us were saying because the person who pointed something out would use the word never or always.

So, for example, if my wife wanted me to actually help with the dishes, she was actually quite correct if she would say, “You don’t help clean up as often as you could or should.” That was a correct statement. But if she would say to me, “You never help with the dishes,” the never would trigger me and I would get into a frequency argument with her, and say, “That’s not true,” and I would pull out my little notepad and say, “On Tuesday, July 30th, I actually put the pizza dishes in the…” And so, we would get derailed into an argument about never or always and away from the underlying issue itself around which she or I would be right.

Also, saying things, for example, like, “Don’t take it personal.” I would submit to listeners that we actually never use that phrase except in situations when we know at some level it’s personal. There’s no reason you would say that if that wasn’t the case. There’s the classic scene from You’ve Got Mail where Tom Hanks has got the big Fox Books store and he’s putting Meg Ryan’s little family independent bookstore out of business, and he says to her, “Why are you so mad at me? It’s not personal. It’s just business.” And, of course, she rightfully says, “What are you talking about? ‘It’s not personal?’ This is my family’s bookstore. This is nothing but personal.”

And so, I think avoiding phrases like, “It’s not personal.” And, listeners, if they want, can easily find a short piece on HBR.org that I wrote just a month or so ago on trap phrases and words to avoid in a conversation that speak to all of these kinds of examples.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love it when we get specific about precise words to avoid. Any words that you love, key things that find their way into a lot of great communications?

Jim Detert
So, if you go back to the great sort of master Chris Argyris, he talked about the idea of cognitive ladders of inference and advocacy and inquiry. And so, for listeners who haven’t heard of this, the basic idea was that most of the time we communicate at what Chris called the top of the ladder, our conclusion. I say, “Hey, Pete, we should do this and we should do it tomorrow.” That’s a conclusion. And Pete says, “That’s crazy. We should stick with what we got.” That’s a conclusion.

What we fail to do is get below those cognitive ladders of inference, that is what’s going on in our head. So, if I’m saying, “Hey, we should do this and we should do it tomorrow,” what I have done actually is I’m drawing on some data, like, “Hey, here’s data on what our competitors are doing. Here’s data internally on how our sales have decreased recently,” or, “Hey, here are some data on us losing some top talent because they’re bored.” And from that, I might reason, “We need to do something new and we need to do it in a way that catches the market’s attention, and, therefore, I reached that conclusion I said to you.”

And, similarly, you’re saying, “Hey, we should stick with it the way it is.” The thing is that you’re looking at other data. You may be looking and saying, “Nobody above me has said we have a problem yet. Most of the industry is still doing what we’re doing.” You might therefore reason, “I think things are fine. Jim is just antsy. They’re ballistic with what we’ve got.”

And so, the specific tool here is advocacy and inquiry. And advocacy isn’t just yelling my conclusion more loudly. It’s helping people see why I came to that conclusion. So, phrases like, “Can I share my data with you?” or, “Can I help you see my reasoning?” things that reveal your ladder, language that reveals your ladder. And then the most powerful thing are inquiry phrases, saying, “Hey, Pete, I heard you say that you think we should stay. Can you help me understand why? Can you help me see where you’re coming from? Can you share your reasoning with me?”

Skillful inquiry is perhaps the single best way to sort of build communication bridges I know and have ever read about. And all you got to do, we’re talking about the world of work, but all I got to do is look around the world we’re living in, the divisiveness politically, etc., and you realize we are all constantly screaming at each other from the top of our ladders, and we’re not good at all of helping people see where we’re coming from, or taking perspective by asking people where they’re coming from.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. That’s so good. That’s good. And speaking of emotions, what are your top tips on managing the emotions, like, either you’re super scared or you’re super angry when you are prepping to speak up, choose courage?

Jim Detert
Yeah, so fear and anger, we sort of all intuitively know, they have the opposite action propensities. So, fear will tend to make you sort of flee or freeze. Fear is an avoidance emotion, whereas, anger is an approach emotion. Anger makes you want to go toward the source. So, the advice has to be quite different. With fear, you have to do things, frankly, often ahead of time. Over longer periods of time, it can be about being in good physical shape, it can be about mindfulness, yoga, anything that sort of helps you sort of change your sort of base physiological response.

People with high fear often find they have to also take specific steps like scripting out in advance things they’re going to say. They may have to practice more and have people sort of shoot back at them so they can practice sort of staying in the moment and not fleeing. Most people don’t physically run out of a room but you’ll see them just shut down and cave. And so, they have to really practice camping down the fear.

Anger, on the other hand, is, in some respects, useful because if you get angry enough about something, you’re actually likely to bring it up and say or do something about it. The problem with anger is you’re likely to be quite unskillful – offensive, for example. And here I’ll tell a story about myself. Most people, I think, in fact, almost everybody who knows me would say, “Jim has no problem choosing courage but at times Jim has had a problem with displaying competent courage.” And in most instances, that would be because I let anger at injustices or problems or whatever get in the way.

And so, part of dealing with anger is what you do in the moment. It turns out these old adages like, “Count to ten,” or, “Take three deep breaths,” these are actually quite useful because what they actually are doing is trying to engage your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down. It’s often a very useful tactic to try to teach yourself, to train yourself, to accept in emergencies not speak in that moment but schedule a follow-up, allow the moment to pass and then schedule after you’ve sort of gotten your emotions back together.

And then, frankly, part of it is knowing who you are and using strategies, sometimes even technologies to be your friend. So, in my case, this was a number of years ago, having made the classic mistake of firing off some emails when I was upset. I’d learned that you can actually set the Outlook timer to basically hold all emails you’ve sent in the outbox for any designated number of minutes or hours. And so, for quite some time, I set my Outlook outgoing mail to hold for 60 minutes because I knew that if I basically didn’t send emails for an hour, there was a very high likelihood I would calm down and revisit that email and have a chance to save it before I couldn’t.

So, learning strategies for both, lessening your anger, and then sort of navigating around it are really important.

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

Jim Detert
I think, again, the thing to really know is that if you accept the premise that we’ve talked about here today, which is that this is a choice everybody has to make and it’s about skills, then the really important thing to do is to set specific goals. And I guess one thing we haven’t talked about is the reason I think people often don’t engage in courage at work is they think of the very scariest thing that comes to mind first, and then they, rightfully so, conclude one of two things, “I’m not going to do that because it’s too difficult and it’ll go terribly,” or they’ll say, “I tried it, and because it was so incredibly difficult and I wasn’t ready, I totally screwed it up. And that only confirmed for me how stupid choosing courage is.”

I think this is akin to the idea that you decide, you’re not a runner but you decide you’re going to run a 10K. Well, the dumbest thing to do would be to go out and try to run 10K the first day. You’d be so sore with so many injuries, you’d probably never jog again. So, what I encourage people to do is build a personal courage ladder. Yeah, you can put that scariest thing on the top rung but put some sort of moderately difficult things in the middle rungs, and put some things that you’re a little afraid of but you could imagine doing on the lowest rungs, and then choose those to start with.

Because, as with any skill, the way you actually build competence over time is you start small, and you have a little success, and you feel better about yourself, it increases your motivation. So, what we haven’t really, I think, talked about enough is the importance of starting small. That’s how all skills are developed.

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

Jim Detert
Yeah, I love the quote of George Bernard Shaw. He says, “Reasonable people adapt to the world around themselves. Unreasonable people try to adapt the world to themselves, and that’s why all progress depends on unreasonable people.” I think we give so much advice about sort of fitting in, getting along, and sometimes we forget that, actually, the great change agents, the people who we most admire were okay pushing boundaries and being a little bit unreasonable.

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

Jim Detert
So, although these are quite dated, I think, perhaps the most powerful research ever done was the Milgram experiments on deference to authority. Milgram was, essentially, showing that in any reasonable size town in America, he could find people who would be willing to pull the shock lever to pretty high voltage simply because they were instructed to do so by power. And I think the Milgram studies and Asch’s conformity studies, they have shown us, time and again, how powerful the forces towards sort of conformity and deference in hierarchies is. And that is such a potent set of research to remind ourselves why we have to sort of choose courage and change systems.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jim Detert
So, I love some of the classic fiction books, like Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, these books that you say, “Gosh, 50 years, or however ahead of time, these people, even though writing fiction, really foresaw a world that was going to come into being.” Also, recently, a much more recent favorite, I read a book called Awareness by Anthony De Mello. He was sort of a Buddhist monk who, essentially, in this book is saying, “Stop trying to change everything in yourself and everybody else. The first step is just awareness,” and then has a lot of tips on how to just become more mindful and self-aware.

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

Jim Detert
Yeah, I tell you, I was thinking about this notion of tools, and I felt a little bit like a Luddite because I’m not so much of a tools guy. But I will tell you that what I love, actually, are intellectual frameworks. A simple one, very consistent with the conversation we’re having, is Kim Scott’s Radical Candor two-by-two framework where she describes being radically candid as that beautiful combination of telling the truth but also having people understand you care.

And I love her off-quadrant descriptions of ruinous empathy, people who don’t tell the truth because they’re so worried about looking like they care, or people who are obnoxiously aggressive, they tell the truth but nobody thinks they’re doing it for the right reason. And I find that notion of having to move either from ruinous empathy or from obnoxious aggression toward that quadrant of caring honesty just such a compelling reminder when I work with folks.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jim Detert
So, I am a big reader of other folks’ advice on writing. And while people vary across the board – they write in the morning, they write at night, they write with a suit on, they write naked – you name it, there’s huge variance. But one thing that all writers seem to agree on is you got to have butt in seat, that books do not get written, articles do not get written, if you aren’t at the desk, if you aren’t writing.

And so, for me, a really important habit is just butt in seat. I don’t have to feel it, I don’t have to think I’m going to have great wisdom, I just do it. And, in fact, when I wrote Choosing Courage, I set a goal that I was going to write 15 minutes every day, just 15 minutes, I said, “If that’s all I got in me, fine. I’m going to write 15 minutes every single day until it was written.” And I did. And some days, because that was such an easy goal to achieve, I wrote for several hours, but there was no pressure to do just 15. And I think I wrote the first draft of Choosing Courage in 173 days of my 15-minute rule.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And is there a particular nugget you share that resonates with folks; you’re known for?

Jim Detert
So, I think I have said and seen multiple people quote this notion that leadership is not a popularity contest. We grow up thinking, because we see leaders as folks who emerge in the playground or in student council elections, or whatever, we think leadership is a popularity contest but great leadership is much, much harder than that and actually involves a willingness to sort of stand alone and sometimes do unpopular things. So, leadership is not a popularity contest. And then, more recently, I think this notion that competent courage comes from practice not any innate quality or capacity is, I think, something that has resonated with people.

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

Jim Detert
So, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I do a lot of writing and posting on LinkedIn. And I also have a website, simply JimDetert.com where my different projects, writing, curriculum, etc., are all shared.

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

Jim Detert
Build that courage ladder for yourself and commit today, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. Commit today to what you’re going to do. And the particular challenge, beyond just build the ladder and choose something, is lock yourself in. So, if you know you have a hard time following through on things you find sort of difficult or risky, put some stake in the ground. Tell your boss you’re going to do it. Make a pledge that you will give a sizable amount of money to a charity or political party you hate if you don’t take the action by a certain date. Somehow lock yourself in. That’s how people end up doing hard things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jim, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and success in all your courageous choices.

Jim Detert
Thank you much. Same to you.

Aug 16
0

694: How to Make Your Voice Heard with Connson Locke

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Connson Locke says: "Making your voice heard is not just about dominating other people."

Connson Locke reveals the factors that get people to sit up and take notice.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we pay attention to some more than others 
  2. The elements of an influential voice
  3. The simple secret to becoming more likable 

 

About Connson

Professor Connson Locke joined the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008 where she teaches Leadership, Organizational Behaviour, and Negotiation and Decision Making.  Connson has over 30 years’ experience as an educator, coach, and consultant working in Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Australia. Prior to entering academia, she served as Regional Training and Development Manager for the Boston Consulting Group where she was responsible for the learning and development of consulting staff in 10 offices across Asia Pacific.

Connson holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Business Administration (Organizational Behaviour) from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University where she graduated with honours. Her new book, Making Your Voice Heard, uses the research on power and influence to help people speak up to those who have more power than they do. 

Resources Mentioned

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Connson Locke Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Connson, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Connson Locke
You’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, my pleasure. I am excited to talk about how we can go about making our voices heard. But, first, I think we need to hear just a bit about you, bungee jumping in Thailand.

Connson Locke
Well, bungee jumping in Thailand, it was in my early 30s and I was going through an early mid-life crisis and I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I thought, “I’m just going to go away on vacation by myself.” And in Asia, at least at the time, it was quite safe for a woman traveling alone. So, I went to Thailand and I thought, “Oh, look, there’s a bungee jumping place that’s over a lake.” And I’d always wanted to bungee jump, and I thought, “It’s over water so it’s probably safe, right?” It was only afterwards that I found out if you hit water at such high speed, it’s like hitting the ground.

And so, I went, I got this tuk-tuk driver, and the tuk-tuk is like the local taxi, he didn’t speak any English, and I pointed out where I wanted to go, so he took me there. He had never seen bungee jumping before so he was the only person there that was watching me, essentially, except for the staff. So, I stand up there, and the thing about bungee jumping, you see the photos, it looks like people are flying. You do not fly. You drop like a rock.

So, I stepped off the platform thinking, “Oh, I’m going to fly like a bird,” and I just went, boom, straight down, screaming. So, afterwards, I go back to the tuk-tuk, and the driver was staring at me, like, “Oh, my God, I cannot believe what you just did.” And he’s like tapping his chest going, “Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” like your heart must be going crazy, and I said, “Yes?” And so, he bought me a bottle of water, which he makes hardly any money but he bought me a bottle of water because he felt so bad for me. That was me bungee jumping in Thailand.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom? I bet that probably plays in your head from time to time. That’s unforgettable. Well, so I take it that it wasn’t something you’re going to do again?

Connson Locke
No, no, it was one of those things I wanted to try once but that’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, there you have it. Well, I’ve been skydiving and hang gliding, and I loved it, but bungee jumping just feels like my stomach would go, “Waah,” just from the jolt.

Connson Locke
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And I don’t know if I would do so well. Okay. Well, so I’m glad we covered that. That’s important. And now it’s also important, your book Making Your Voice Heard. That is something, boy, our listeners have asked for before. Can you tell us what’s kind of like the core thesis here?

Connson Locke
So, this is all about what I call upward influence. How do you influence people who have as much or more power than you do? And this is something that has always interested me. And I teach leadership at the LSE, so I’ve been teaching leadership for about 13 years now. And what I noticed in a lot of leadership courses, the focus is very much on, “How do the leaders influence their team?” But, come on, if you’re the boss, how hard is it to make your team do what you want them to do? Like, okay, you’ve got to engage them and all that, but still.

What’s really important and what I struggled with for the 16 years before I entered academia was, “How do I influence my boss?” or, “How do I influence the client?” or, “How do I influence the people who have more power than me, the government official, or whoever it is that I’m trying to convince?” That’s the challenging thing and that’s what the book is focused on.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m looking forward to digging into the particular details. But maybe could you start us off by sharing with us a particularly surprising and counterintuitive discovery you’ve made while doing this research?

Connson Locke
I suppose what I find interesting about it is that it’s possible. What I mean is I’ve always been a very shy introverted person and, growing up, I’m Chinese-American, and growing up my parents were very traditional Chinese, I always grew up with this idea that, “Hierarchy is hierarchy and you’re not supposed to argue with your boss. Like, you don’t disagree with your boss. That’s crazy. And why would your boss change his or her mind because of what you say? They are the boss.”

And so, to me, I guess it’s not counterintuitive but it was something that was surprising for me is that, actually, this is something your boss wants you to do in a lot of cases. Like, they want to hear your voice, they want to get your opinion, and if you think that something is going wrong and you can fix it, they want to know that. So, it’s one of those things that, once I realized it’s beneficial for the organization, oftentimes the people in charge want to hear your voice, then that kind of changed the way I looked at it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I concur as someone who has been both the boss and the follower. As the boss, it is genuinely helpful when I say something and someone tells me, not necessarily, “That’s the stupidest idea ever. You’re so wrong.” But rather, “Hmm, do you think that’s the best course of action, given X, Y, Z?” and I go, “Oh, shoot. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, thank you.” And then, “It’d be like disastrous if we went ahead and charged ahead with the thing I originally thought of, so thank you, collaborator, for bringing that to my attention.”

Okay. Well, so then I want to dig into the how-to of that. But maybe, zooming out, can you tell us, kind of fundamentally, what makes some people more influential than others? And I’ve had listeners say something like, “Hey, sometimes I’ll be in a meeting, and I’ll say something, and then someone else, and it was sort of like, ‘Hmm,” kind of barely acknowledged. And someone else will say just about exactly the same thing, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and there’s like enthusiasm and movement, and I think, ‘What the heck is going on here?’ And it feels horrible.” You feel so small when that happens. But what are some drivers behind that? What makes someone more influential than someone else?

Connson Locke
So, sometimes it’s pure bias, sometimes there is maybe the person who is being paid attention to is maybe physically bigger, or is taller, or has been around longer, or is more senior. So, these are things you don’t necessarily have control over and there are biases towards listening to those people more. But what you can do to be that person that people listen to is there’s reputation, and then there is delivery style, and, of course, there’s content, obviously, but we’re talking about two people presenting the same amount of content, so who gets listened to more, assuming all other things are equal.

Reputation is what’s called basis of power. So, basis of power are where you get your power from, and if you’re the boss, you get your power from things like you have access to rewards and punishments. But if you’re not the boss, you get your power from two things. One is called expert power, which is people respect you for your expertise. And the other is called reverend power, which is people like you, but this takes time, you have to build it over time.

And if you’ve built that respect, if people respect you, and they go, “Oh, okay. Well, I’ve worked with Connson for a long time, and when she says something, I know that it’s worth listening to,” or, “I’ve worked with Connson a long time, and I really like listening to…I’ve really liked working with her, so I think I will listen to her.” That is something that can really feed into that. So, that’s the reputation.

But the other thing is the delivery style. And delivery style is everything from your body language. We think a lot about body language but, actually, I think what’s even more important than body language is the voice. What are we doing with our voice? Are we emphasizing? Are we being monotone? Are we using pauses? And that’s something that we can practice, but, also, it’s delivery is like it’s being pithy, it’s like getting to the point, it’s catching people’s attention. So, it’s that combination of how do you sound, how do you look, and what are you saying.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then let’s talk about both the long-term game and the short-term game. Let’s hear first some quick hits, the do’s and don’ts of sort of like the voice and the presentation and the delivery style because that’s something we can do immediately and, hopefully, see some impact. So, what are the top things that give us an influence boost versus an influence ding?

Connson Locke
Okay. So, when it comes to delivery style, think of how you look and how you sound. And I’m going to assume that what you’re saying is the same regardless, so let’s focus on how you look and how you sound. How you look, if you’re online, you need to pay attention to lightning. If you’re not online then, obviously, you don’t have to worry about that, you’re all in the same room anyway. If you’re online, you also need to pay attention to sound quality, so getting a good headset so people can hear you.

The other things about how you look is think about your clothing, your hairstyle. Are you standing up straight? Are you slouched or are you taking up space? So, the good things are, if you’re standing up or sitting up straight, you’re taking up some space, which means you’re not shrinking, you’re not kind of hiding, but you’re really owning that space. You’re using eye contact while speaking because that’s what makes people…that’s what makes you come across as confident. And you’re using a tone of voice that’s confident and natural, a pace that’s natural, and you’re willing to pause.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe give us a verbal demonstration then associated with what does a nice influential voice sound like versus a not-so influential voice?

Connson Locke
Sure. So, if I’m trying to tell you about what makes me influential, yeah, and I’m talking and I’m just kind of using a lot of filler words, it’s not very engaging and, after a while, you kind of tune out. Instead, if you’re short, sharp, sweet, you deliver the information, look confident, sound confident, and deliver your information in sharp bites. Okay, I’ve got a confident tone of voice, I’m pausing in between each point, and sometimes I’ll change my tone if I’m emphasizing something or maybe I’ll say something a bit softer if I want to get your attention. That’s using your voice to its potential and it’s something you can practice. Everyone can practice at home. You record yourself on your phone, you play it back.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. It’s so funny, in the first one, my attention started drifting just within a couple of seconds, and this is kind of my job is to pay attention to everything you’re saying.

Connson Locke
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And think about how we’re going to package and present it. So, I thought that was pretty funny and then there may very well have been some listeners, I think you’d notice the same thing or maybe even skipped ahead, like, “Oh, I’m bored right now. Let’s get more.” So, that’s potent there. And then part of it is practicing and recording yourself so you can just hear and see the difference for yourself. Any other tips in terms of doing the preparation so that that is possible?

Connson Locke
You know, who I think one of my best coaches has been, and he hasn’t meant to be my coach, my husband who I have been married to for about 20 years now. He’s a very impatient person. And when I first started dating him, I would tell him stories about what happened to me at work, and I’d go on and on and on, and he would just drift off, like he was not listening anymore.

So, over the years, I learned to be very much to the point. Like, I think a great way of practicing is to find a friend or a family member who you know is pretty impatient and practice telling them a story. If you can keep their attention, you’re getting to the point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I like it. Okay, so that’s the vocal stuff. You mentioned clothing, and maybe this is common sense but maybe perhaps not common practice. What are the do’s and don’ts when it comes to clothing?

Connson Locke
With clothing, you have to pay attention to the culture of the organization you’re in. Don’t make assumptions. I had a student who went for an interview at an advertising company, and she wore a very conservative dark blue suit, and she noticed that everyone around her was wearing colorful funky kind of creative clothing. She did not get the job. So, don’t make assumptions about what’s the appropriate clothing or not. Really, you need to observe the culture around you and adopt what is best in that environment.

Pete Mockaitis
I notice in my own clothing game, which is mediocre – I’m wearing a T-shirt right now but you’re cool with it. Thanks, Connson – is that just sort of little things in terms of like, “Oh, there’s a wrinkle I didn’t notice before but, oh, now I see it and it’s there,” or, “Oh, there’s a little bit of a spot of, I don’t know if it was maybe a little bit of grease or oil or ketchup I got to wipe up and had just a smidge of that sort of oil or residue left behind.” So, it’s like a wet spot but it’s there for, I guess, the day. That’s what I find with clothing is those little things.

And, I don’t know, sometimes I wonder how much do people care but I think I’m coming around to thinking that even if it’s not fully in their conscious purview, it’s sending a little bit of a signal that’s impeding influence. Would you agree with that or what do you think about those little clothing things?

Connson Locke
I think with clothing, it’s the impression that you make. So, if there’s a little stain and you hardly notice it, I doubt anyone else is going to notice it, unless you point it out to them, which I would suggest you don’t do. But, otherwise, it’s about the general impression. And so, as long as, in terms of the general impression, if you’re making the impression that you want to make, sometimes you want to make a more casual impression, sometimes you want to make a more formal impression, and so it’s all about that kind of broad impression that you’re making, and that’s what you should be aiming for. I wouldn’t worry too much about the little wrinkles or the stains.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thanks for that. That helped there. I think fit also can factor into things in terms of if it’s a little too tight or a little too baggy, it looks quite different than when it’s sharp, like, “Oh, yeah, that fits you just right.” You just look good no matter the context. Okay, so clothing, we’re not going to say much more about that. When it comes to that expertise and the reputation, sort of the long game, how do you recommend we develop that well?

Connson Locke
So, developing expert power, the most obvious way to do it is just to be really good at what you do, be really good at your job, but also to make sure people know that you’re good at your job. So, for example, when I first started working at LSE, I got a lot of good evaluations as a teacher, but not everyone knows what evaluations everyone else is getting. But the head of my group was so impressed with my teaching scores that she actually had this little, at one of the staff meetings, she gave me a little award for getting the best teaching evaluations that she’s ever seen.

And so, that was great because I didn’t have to brag on my own behalf, which never looks good. She was the one who kind of let people know what I was doing, and that helped me gain expert power. So, then my colleagues were like, “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that Connson was good at that.” So, it’s being really good at what you do but also making sure, finding a way to let people know that you’re good at it.

If you want to build expert power with a particular person, it can really help if you can help them solve a problem that they’re working on, that they’re struggling with, because then you’re helping them solve this problem and they’ll be grateful, and they’ll also be like, “Oh, you’re pretty smart.” So, those are the ways of building expert power.

Pete Mockaitis
And then what I’m intrigued by your fantastic evaluations, and maybe particular pedagogical things that are not within the scope here, but is there anything you do in the classroom you think that is particularly powerful when it comes to being liked and influential by your students?

Connson Locke
I think, in terms of the evaluations that I’ve received, there are two things that students usually say. One is they can tell that I love what I teach, like I really care about this. But it’s not just that I’m so fascinated about the topic that I teach, it’s that I care about helping them become better leaders. So, when I teach, it’s not me kind of indulging myself. When I teach, it’s about helping my students become better at leadership, at influence, at doing better in their careers, and they can tell that. They can tell that I want to help them. So, that really engages them.

The other thing is I tell lots of stories, and they love the stories. So, I tell stories about my kids, about my husband. I guess I’ve already mentioned something about my husband today, and it’s just I bring all of my personal experiences into it, and they think that’s very engaging.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Okay. Well, so then when it comes to the workplace, well, hey, that’s been a common theme we’ve seen in terms of just caring, just is huge in terms of people pick up on it, they want to reciprocate, you’re motivated, you get more creative ideas, you look out for their good, and so all kinds of great things happen just by caring, and caring can be rare in some environments, so it really is a distinguisher. So, what else do you recommend folks do to bolster their likability at work?

Connson Locke
So, in terms of likability, so expertise is one thing, and we’ve already talked about that. Likability is different in that it’s really about getting to know people as people, not as work colleagues. It’s really having that curiosity in a person. It’s wanting to connect with people just for the sake of connecting. So, for example, I don’t know, if you’ve got someone who works at the front desk, and you’re walking past the front desk to go to the stationery cupboard, pause at the front desk, chat with them, get to know them, at least get to know their name and who they are.

It’s that connecting with colleagues, chatting with people at the coffee machine. I know that doesn’t happen so much now with the pandemic and everything. I had a colleague, just today, who’s helping me with something, and she was so amazingly helpful. I said to her, “I’m going to take you out to dinner in return.” And so, it’s that taking the time to get to know people and appreciate people. That makes you likable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, you also write a bit about energy and body cues. Can you share with us a little bit about what are these, how do we identify them, and use them to our advantage?

Connson Locke
So, when it comes to body cues, I think most of what I think is important to focus on is what you are communicating to other people because that’s what you have control over. And what I think is most important, when you’re trying to be influential, is communicating confidence. And so, confidence, communicating confidence is everything you learn in presentation skills training – stand up straight, take up space, use eye contact, sound confident, all of those things.

When we’re trying to interpret other people’s body cues, we have to be very careful because it’s really easy to misinterpret. So, one thing I usually warn people about is narcissists are great at looking confident, and we confuse confidence with competence, and, obviously, it’s not the same thing. If someone looks confident, we think that they’re pretty competent. The next time you are interviewing someone or listening to someone, and you think, “Wow, they really know what they’re talking about,” just question yourself a little bit, “What am I basing this on? Am I basing this on the fact that they sound really confident? Or, am I actually basing this on something concrete?”

Like, if you’re interviewing someone, how do you protect yourself against a narcissist? There are a couple of things you can do. One is you ask for specific examples of what they’ve accomplished, because once you get the examples, then you can hear how they talk about the examples. Do they talk about it as if they did everything themselves, or do they give other people credit?

And the other this is you ask other people how they were treated by this person, especially the receptionist or the junior people, because narcissists tend to talk down to people who they don’t think are very important. So, I guess the bottom-line is don’t read too much into other people’s body cues, and, in fact, try to get additional data to make sure that what you’re interpreting is accurate.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that sounds dead-on. And then I find there’s an interesting blend, I was chatting with my buddy Connor about this, not Connie, not Connson – Connor. And he said, I think I was chatting, it was a speech therapist. I was taking my son to a speech therapist, and she said, “Yeah, his pronunciation on words is pretty good but when it gets stretched out to a whole sentence, it does get a little bit harder to understand.” And I thought, “You know, I’ve always thought the word was pronounced pronunciation, and you’re the speech therapist, so I would imagine pronunciation is your whole game. So, if you say it’s pronoun-ciation, then I’m inclined to think maybe it is.”

And I think it’s so fascinating, and maybe this is agreeableness, the personality trait that I’m capturing here, but it’s like there are some folks who seem, and she was very sweet, but there are some folks who seem very confident and positive that their way, their thoughts are correct. And I, who have, I guess, a decent bit of humility and agreeableness, or whatever the construct is, when I receive that, I go, “Oh, okay. Well, I kind of thought it was this,” or, “Hmm, that doesn’t make much sense to me given A, B, C in my own experience, but you really seem to think…”

And so, it’s tricky and, often, that’s the conversation I have with friends, it’s like, “Wait. Am I crazy? What’s the deal here?” And so, hey, help us if you can. Help us decode that. Like, how much stock should we put in the confidence of another person relative to our own knowledge, data, expertise? And it’s probably not a one-size-fits-all answer. I’m putting you on the spot, but how do you think about that dance?

Connson Locke
The way I think about it would be trying to break down, “Is this person…Do I feel like this person is confident in what they’re saying because of the way they are saying it? Or, are they actually putting some data and some logic and some actual concrete support behind what they’re saying?” Because if they’re giving me some concrete support, okay, maybe I’ll be a bit more confident in what they’re saying. If it’s simply they’re delivering it with confidence, no, don’t be fooled by that.

I’m just going to use my husband as an example again. When my children, my daughters are now teenagers but I remember when they were younger, when they were like eight and ten years old, and my husband is the full-time parent. And one time I heard one of my daughters asking her father about a history question. We live in the UK so, obviously, they’re not going to ask me a history question. I don’t know about the queens and the kings of England and all of that.

So, they asked their father, who’s English, and he gave a very definitive answer, and so they went and did their homework. And then they came back to me the next day, and they said, “I got that question wrong. I asked daddy, and daddy was so confident, and so I thought it was right, but it was wrong.” And I was like, “Yes. Well, you should really double-check for yourself. Daddy says things confidently but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.” And so, my daughters were learning that lesson very early on, but I think it’s something we all have to keep in mind. Just because someone is saying something in a confident tone doesn’t mean it’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, Connson, tell me, any other key things you want to make sure to mention about making your voice heard before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Connson Locke
I think one of the most important things we need to understand about making your voice heard is that it’s not just about dominating other people. It’s not just about being heard. Like, you have to have something to say. You have to have a reason why you’re doing this. So, what has helped me over the years, as I said I was very introverted before and had a lot of trouble making my voice heard. But what has helped me over the years is that I have a higher purpose in a way. I’m helping people learn, I’m helping people be better at what they do, and that’s what drives me.

So, I think instead of just thinking, “How do I get loud enough so everyone is going to hear me?” you should be asking yourself, “What do I want to say and is it worth saying? Is it actually going to add to what’s happening out there?” The other thing I would say also is influence is a two-way street. So, it’s not just about trying to convince the other person that you’re right. It’s actually about getting to know the other person as well and being open to them, asking questions and finding out what their perspective is, and having a two-way conversation.

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

Connson Locke
Yes, so there’s a book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet, and there’s a quote from that that says, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that holds your understanding.” And it took me a very long time to understand this, but now that I’ve been through failure, I’ve been through a lot of pain over the years – I’m 55 so I’ve lived, you know, I’ve done a lot of things – I now understand that when you go through a painful experience, you’re growing and, as a result, you actually get bigger.

And I kind of think of it as it’s kind of like a snake shedding its skin. So, each time you go through this painful experience, you kind of shed a skin, you’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it’s how you grow. It’s how you develop. And so, when I look back on my life and the painful experiences I’ve had, I now no longer regret any of them. There was a time when I hated it, I was like, “Oh, my God, why did I do that job? Why did I have to go through that? Why did I have that horrible boss?” But now I’m like, “You know what, I learned from that and I’m better for it and I’m bigger for it.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Connson Locke
I would actually say, and this is a little bit controversial, the power poses study.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, Amy Cuddy.

Connson Locke
Yeah, Amy Cuddy, power poses. And it’s only controversial because in her original research with her colleagues, what they found was that holding a power pose changes your hormones. It reduces cortisol, the stress hormone, and increases testosterone, makes you more confident. And other researchers that tried to replicate it did not find any effect on hormones. And so, it became this big thing, like, “Oh, we can’t replicate it. It’s a false study. You should stop talking about it.”

However, what they did replicate was that people who held a power pose for two minutes – and a power pose is not something you do in front of other people, you kind of do in the privacy of a bathroom or something – you do feel more confident as a result. And when they actually did things like they had people do a presentation. Half of them did a power pose before the presentation, and the other half didn’t, and the people who were judging the presentations didn’t know who had done a power pose, but they judged the presentations.

And the presentations that they found more engaging turned out to be the people who had done the power pose. So, I actually think it’s one of those things that it’s so easy, a two-minute power pose. I do it before a big presentation when I’m really nervous. It’s just one of those really easy practical things that, yeah, that’s what I love. I love those easy practical things that you can just work into your day and it doesn’t take much time.

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

Connson Locke
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Connson Locke
It’s a 12-week course in rediscovering your creativity and it doesn’t take much time. I did it while I was working at the Boston Consulting Group, actually, so I didn’t have much time. But it took maybe half an hour a day, and then maybe a couple hours on the weekend, but, as a result of following that 12-week course chapter by chapter, it just kind of put me back in touch with, I don’t know, the joy of being alive, kind of put me in touch with rediscovering, like noticing colors and nature and all of these things that I had kind of lost touch with.

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

Connson Locke
A favorite tool I actually think is in my job I lecture so I’m using PowerPoint all the time, which I actually love PowerPoint if it’s used properly, if you’re not using it as a Word document, but you’re actually using it for visuals and shapes and all of that. But PowerPoint has this notes function which I really like using.

The other favorite tool, nowadays when I’m teaching online on Zoom, the polling function. I love polling and I found I can really get students, especially my undergrads who normally won’t…I’ve got like 200 to 300 undergrads at a lecture. In a lecture hall, they’re not going to raise their hands but if I give them a poll, it’s anonymous, and they’ll answer, and I get to know them that way as well. So, I love the polling function.

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

Connson Locke
One thing that my students have said, they appreciate that I share, is how much I used to struggle when I was younger with my making my voice heard. And I often tell the story of when I was a teenager, I think I was about 15, when I was on vacation with my parents, and we were in a hotel, and my mother said, “Can you go downstairs and ask the front desk for a newspaper?” And I was so stressed out by that, I was like, “What? No, I can’t. You want me to ask a stranger about…? What? No.”

And my students laughed when I talk about that but I think they appreciate me kind of revealing how far I’ve come and how it is possible if you are painfully shy and introverted to evolve and to actually get your voice heard.

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

Connson Locke
I have a website ConnsonLocke.com, and that’s Connson, C-O, double N, S-O-N. C-O, double N because I was born in Connecticut, L-O-C-K-E.com.

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

Connson Locke
You know what, I think one of the most important things is to take time for yourself, is to really not just take time for yourself, but to take time to get to know yourself and to really understand, “What are your priorities? What are your values? What do you find important in life?” Because if you don’t understand that, you can’t bring your best self to work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Connson, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you lots of luck in all the ways you make your voice heard.

Connson Locke
Thank you.

Aug 12
0

693: Building Better Relationships through Validation with Michael Sorensen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Michael Sorensen demonstrates the simple superpower that vastly improves our relationships: validation.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to improve conversations with the four-step validation method 
  2. How we unintentionally invalidate others
  3. How to move past the discomfort of emotional conversations 

About Michael

Michael Sorensen is a marketing executive by day and a bestselling author, speaker, and relationship coach by night. His book, I Hear You, has helped hundreds of thousands of people across the world become masters of connection in business, love, and life. 

Michael has been invited to speak at some of the world’s largest organizations, had his work translated into over a dozen languages, and has even conducted training for the United States Navy. 

 

Resources Mentioned

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Michael Sorensen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Michael Sorensen
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get your wisdom on validation and the good stuff from your book, I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships. But, first, I need to hear you made your own mattress. What is the story?

Michael Sorensen
Yes, I wonder when that would come up. Your intro or your intake sheet asked for something kind of unique and I started thinking, “Well, what do I not talk to many people about?” It’s that. It’s something I’m a little bit embarrassed of, and I’m a little bit proud of. I’ve got a bad back and I set out a few years ago to find the perfect mattress to try to make that back pain go away, and that’s was when Casper and some of these other direct-to-consumer companies were coming online, and they’ve got free return policies, so I thought, “Why not? How can it hurt to order?” so I ordered that. It killed my back.

I ordered the next one, that still hurt, and I actually ordered seven mattresses and then returned them or donated them before I actually sourced my own foam and cut it up and found a cover for it and all of that just to try to find the mattress that would work best for my body. The irony is I ended up finding one that actually works and I tossed my homemade one but, you know, it’s still fun to build things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I got to know, what was the difference? What did your homemade version and your final version have the others did not?

Michael Sorensen
This is incredibly nerdy. I would take a picture of myself laying down with my shirt off so I could see my spine alignment, and all of them had my hip sagging lower than my shoulder because my shoulders were propping me up but my hips were down so it was creating this curve. And so, I actually got a different density creating the foam for each section and so my shoulders had a lighter foam and my hips had a heavier foam to try to get that optimal spine alignment.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. And someone made one with that in mind. Is that the…?

Michael Sorensen
Actually, I actually didn’t have that. I just lucked out. It’s the Brooklyn Bedding. They don’t even make that one anymore but it’s just the latex mattress but it was my final…it was probably my eighth mattress actually. I slept on it for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, and I’m still loving it today. I’m not paid to promote it but I probably should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m impressed with just the sheer force and persistence that you rocked in arriving at this. And, likewise, you’ve got something that you call a superpower – validation. Tell us, what do you mean by validation? What does it do for us and why is it a superpower?

Michael Sorensen
Yes, absolutely. I find, especially in the workplace, since this is largely a podcast about the workplace, we place a lot of focus on the value of listening, being a good listener, and we talk about how important that it is. I think we all kind of nod our heads and we say, “Yeah, I could do better at listening.” But, really, the main premise of my book and the main thing that we’re going to talk about here today is that the truly good listeners of the world actually do more than just listen. They listen, seek to understand, and then validate.

And that validation, that’s kind of a secret sauce. That’s what, like you mentioned, that I call a superpower because so many people are craving that. And validation is essentially just telling someone, “Hey, I understand how you’re feeling and you’re not crazy for feeling that way.” That’s really the essence of it. And it sounds so simple, it is simple, but I’m telling you, Pete, it makes all the difference in the world because most of us just jump in with feedback or advice or we try to help people, we try to make them feel better when they’re coming to us with a complaint or a concern or a question, when really what they’re wanting is simply to feel heard and understood.

You’re venting, you’re complaining, and you just want someone to say, “Man, that’s tough,” or, “Then what happened?” and ask a few questions to kind of get into it with you. That’s validation. And it makes all the difference in the workplace, in your relationships at home, with your friends and family, because it helps us feel better connected to each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then can you share, whether maybe it’s in terms of a dramatic transformational relationship that went from poor to okay, or to okay to grand, a nice upgrade, or even maybe some data, some studies? Can you share an illustration of just how powerful this is?

Michael Sorensen
Absolutely. I talk early on in the book about a research conducted by Dr. John Gottman. For your listeners who might not be aware of him or familiar with him, he’s a world-renowned marriage and family therapist, and a number of years ago, he and his colleague set out to determine what makes the healthy happy couples of the world stay in a happy long relationship compared to those who separate or divorce.

And I love the study they put together. They decorated their lab, I think it was the University of Washington, to look like a bed and breakfast, and they invited 130 newlywed couples in, and they said, “Spend the weekend here. Just do what you normally do on a weekend. Cook, eat dinner, watch some TV, read the news, whatever it is, while we observe you,” which, I think, is kind of creepy but it’s funny what people will do for money and science.

And as the observers watched, they noticed that throughout the day, these couples would make small seemingly insignificant requests for connection. They’d be sitting there at the table and the wife would look out the window, and say, “Oh, honey, check out that car.” And what they noticed is that the way the spouse could respond in that instance made all the difference in the connection that they had in their relationship.

So, in that particular instance, the wife notices the car and her husband could look out and respond in one of three ways. He could say, “Wow, that’s awesome. I love that color,” positively, and that’s validating, matching her emotion, getting excited with her, stepping into it is validating. The second way he could respond is negatively, of course saying, “Oh, I hate that. That’s the worst car in the world.” Or, the third way is simply passive, just go, “Huh, that’s nice dear,” maybe not even looking up from the smartphone.

And it seems simple but when they went back, they gathered all the data, they started analyzing it, and then they waited six years, and they followed up with these couples, and they said, “How are you doing? Are you still together? And if you are together, are you happily married still or have you separated?” And what they found was the couples who had separated validated each other only 33% of the time. Whenever they would make a comment like that, their spouse would either be passive or even negative about it, but they wouldn’t engage, they wouldn’t connect with them.

Whereas, the couples that were happily married six years later validated each other 87% of the time. Nearly nine times out of ten, those healthy happy couples were meeting those bids or those requests for connection. And I thought that was interesting. At that time of my life, I was in a relationship that wasn’t going so well, and I realized, “Oh, my gosh, it’s because this woman isn’t validating me. She’s not connecting with me in this way.”

And I flipped the page on this article, and apparently Dr. Gottman and his colleagues can predict with up to 97% accuracy whether people will be together and happy or separated years down the line simply by observing these types of interactions. So, I love that study because it made a big difference for me personally in my romantic relationships but, I can tell you, it’s every bit as powerful in the workplace because work is relationships, business is relationships.

Whether you’re a manager, whether you have colleagues, whether you have clients or customers calling in, you’re working with people, you’re talking with people, and we want to feel connected and understood. And so, validation is one of the most powerful ways to build that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, there you have it. So, then you’ve got a particular four-step method for doing the validation. Can you walk us through this?

Michael Sorensen
Absolutely. And I’ll preface this by saying validation is simple. And so, sometimes people look at four steps and they’re like, “What’s this? It seems complicated. Why do I have to do this?” I’ve reverse-engineered this four-step method to try to help people apply it in some of the more difficult situations.

Maybe we can talk later, Pete, about how to validate someone when they’re angry with you or when you disagree with them because I find that’s where a lot of people get tripped up but it actually makes all the difference in the world if you can, first, hold your defense for a moment, listen to them, validate them, and then get in to your side of the story.

And so, the four steps are, first, listen empathically. Like, really listen for the emotion that the person is sharing, not just the words they’re saying. And then once you’ve identified how they’re feeling, the second step is to validate, just identifying their emotion and offering some justification. So, again, if they’re upset, saying, “Of course, you’re upset. You were up all night working on that and they just threw your work out the window.” That’s validating.

Then, step three is where you give feedback or advice. So, again, if you disagree with someone, or if you have a suggestion, you can give advice but it comes after the validation because it allows that person to feel heard and understood first. And then the fourth and final step is to just validate again. It creates a nice little validation sandwich. Following up the conversation whether it was a difficult conversation, then you wrap it up, and you just say, “Hey, thanks again for coming and talk to me. I know these conversations are uncomfortable and yet we got to have them. I really appreciate your candor.”

Or, if it’s positive, your friends are telling you about something awesome that happened at work the other day, and you’re all excited, and at the very end you say, “Hey, congrats again. You worked your butt off on that presentation, I’m happy to hear it went well.” It’s that final step there to kind of tie it all together.

So, again, those four steps: listen empathically, validate the emotion, offer feedback or advice, and then validate again. And you can go through all those in 30 seconds or you might do it several times in a two-hour conversation but it gives you kind of a loose framework and a basic idea of, “Oh, yeah, hold back on the advice, listen, validate, and then get into it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so one of my favorite parts in your book were the demonstrations from like heavy relationship situations and then a toddler exchange, and so it’s nice to show the breadth of it. But let’s take a look, let’s say we’re in the workplace and someone…well, hey, maybe I’ll just take one of the roles and you take one of the others, if that works for you.

Michael Sorensen
Great. Yeah, roleplay. Here we go.
Hey, Pete, how is it going?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s fine.

Michael Sorensen
Fine? Just fine?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was working on this process to get things that, well, automated into be way more efficient whenever we’re handling the widgets and, well, it just all went to heck. Absolutely nothing works the way they say it’s supposed to work. People have told me they’re going to get me things and just, straight up, haven’t gotten me the things. The software keeps crashing my computer. It’s basically a total failure.

Michael Sorensen
Oh, geez. Man, I’m sorry. How long were you working on that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s been about four months.

Michael Sorensen
Four months of work to have it just fall apart at the last minute.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Michael Sorensen
Oh, my gosh, that’s so frustrating.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Michael Sorensen
Are you…? What are you going to do? Do you think you can salvage it or is it going to…you have to throw it all out?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I guess I’m just going to keep calling these people until they finally give me the right answer and, hopefully, that works eventually.

Michael Sorensen
Oh, man, I’m sorry. I hate it when you spend that much time minding on something and then it just falls apart. You would hope that with a product that expensive, people have it figured out, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

Michael Sorensen
Oh, man. Well, let me know if I can help in any way. Honestly, I don’t know if I can offer much help but I’m happy to if there’s any way I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, thank you. All right. So, I saw the steps in action. Anything you’d comment upon in that exchange?

Michael Sorensen
Obviously, where it’s kind of roleplay, we’re both kind of stumbling through it.

Pete Mockaitis
Making it up.

Michael Sorensen
But one of the most important things that I encourage people to do is ask a lot of discovery questions early on. If you already know what’s going on in the person’s life and the situation, you don’t have to ask a lot of questions. But if you don’t, that’s really important to make sure you’re validating the right things and that you’re actually understanding.

I’ve worked with some people who they try to validate right away, and so somebody, they just get right in, they’re like, “Oh, that must be so…you must be so angry,” and they’re like, “Oh, no, I’m not angry. I’m actually embarrassed,” and you kind of go through it. So, I asked a couple questions, not a ton, but then, pretty quickly, I was matching your emotion. I was trying to kind of reflect what I was seeing in you, which is, “Ah, yeah, of course you’re upset if you spent four months on that.” And I’ve actually said as much, “Of course, you’re upset because…” and I showed that justification in saying, “Yeah, it makes sense. That’s maddening to go through all of that.”

And that little piece is so powerful because, oftentimes, we, as humans, are taught to kind of bury our emotions, we’re taught to not be upset, and sometimes we tell people as much, like, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll work out,” but that doesn’t usually feel very good. Like, “Well, I am upset. I’m looking for you to see that.” And so, that was that validation piece of me just saying, “Hey, that’s really frustrating, especially if this and that. You would think if they had all this time and money put into it that they would have it figured out.” Those are all validating statements because they are giving you permission to feel the frustration that you’re feeling.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, as you say it, it sounds so simple and yet it feels a little rare. I don’t know if you’ve got stats on this but it seems like we’re all hungry for this and we’re not having our fill, broadly speaking. Is that fair to say?

Michael Sorensen
A hundred percent. And I wish I had stats, Pete, but the stats that I can give you are just looking at the reviews of my book and the emails that I get, the hundreds of thousands of people that are saying, “Oh, my goodness, this is what I’ve been missing.” And it’s all over the board. You see people saying, “I didn’t realize that this is what my spouse was asking for.” Then you see people saying, “If my partner had done this, we would still be together.” Then I get emails from customer service managers saying, “Can you do a training on this? Because I listened to your book and I started implementing it and customers are 1000% happier,” whatever it is.

But, you’re right, it’s so simple but we are craving it and that’s one of the things that makes it a superpower is we’re all craving it, few of us recognize that that’s what we’re craving, but we do recognize that we’re not getting it. And that’s where a lot of relationships kind of hit this rocky point because you’re going, you’ll talk to your boss, and your boss, maybe you’ll express a concern or something, and if he or she just says, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it…”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Michael Sorensen
…that doesn’t…you’re like, “Okay.” Well, what do you say to your boss? Versus, if your boss says, “Well, help me understand what’s going on,” and they ask a few questions and they get into it. And if you’re upset, and they say, “First off, thank you. I can imagine how frustrating this is given blah, blah, blah” and you sit there and you go, “Yes, they get me.” It makes all the difference in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so let’s hear about things that are wrong things to say. And I love, in your book, you did this nicely. I remember a couple was struggling with infertility, and then someone said, “Oh, boy, yeah, I just look at my wife and she gets pregnant,” and I’ve heard people say that before. And, of course, when you’re reading it in the context of the book, you’re like, “Wow, that is absolutely a horrific thing to say to a person in that context,” and yet people say it because I don’t think they’re tuned in on this wavelength yet. So, “Don’t worry about it, I got it” is another example of, “We’re not going to get into your feelings. This is already handled.” So, what are some other choice things you hear people say a lot that are kind of the opposite of validating?

Michael Sorensen
The invalidating statements, yeah, it’s things like, “Oh, you’ll be fine,” “It could be worse,” or, “At least it’s not…” fill in the blank. As you listen or you’re hearing these things, ask yourself, “Have you ever said this to someone?” Because you’re right, Pete, people say it all the time, where we say, “Oh, don’t worry. Things will just work out.”

I’ve got a couple siblings who are still single and they desperately want to find their person and I can’t tell you how many times, when they come to someone, and I’m kind of the fly on the wall, and I’m like, “How’s dating going?” and they’re like, “Ah, not super well.” And then, almost immediately, the response is, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find them eventually. You’re a great catcher. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s going to work out.”

And you can see the look on their face, they’re like, “I know that, I’m not stupid, but I’m not enjoying life right now.” It’s kind of hard. I was looking for a little of that validation. Everybody means well. It’s not like we’re trying to be rude to people but we think that’s helping when, in reality, it’s hurting.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think, not to get too deep into this, but one reason we don’t do it is we’re not aware; two is we think we’re helping. I think the third might be that, for a segment of folks, it’s like, “We’re just kind of uncomfortable getting into all that emotional stuff.” And so, hey, if that’s you, what do you do about that?

Michael Sorensen
Well, to that, I would say, and obviously everyone is different, the situations are different. I still hit moments when I’m like, “I don’t really want to talk about it,” like timid people. Obviously, you have to kind of judge the situation. But this is where I think validation becomes, again, such a valuable tool because one of the key reasons I believe people are uncomfortable in those situations is they don’t know how to help, especially if it’s heavier.

I remember talking to a friend whose parents passed away recently and unexpectedly, and prior to knowing how to validate, I would’ve been like, “Oh, what do you say? Like, really, what do you say because I haven’t dealt with that? I’m not about to think that I can give this amazing advice.” But validation is so powerful because you don’t have to say much of anything, you don’t have to fix it. The fix they’re going to figure out and so validations just gives them that space.

And so, when you talk with someone, I like, Pete, your example how you said, “Okay. Well, ask me how I’m doing,” and you say, “Fine,” because that happens a lot. And, usually, it’s when people kind of want to talk about something but they’re not quite sure you want to so they’ll just kind of say, “I’m fine.” And you can read their body language, and then you get to decide whether you want to follow it deeper, but if you do, you can just ask questions. You can see how they’re doing and you just ask questions and then you validate, and you ask questions and you validate, and you don’t ever have to get into solutions.

With my friend, I just said, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t even imagine,” and I just sat there for a moment, and I let her sit for a second, and she said, “Yeah, it’s brutal.” And I said, “So, how did you find out?” and she explained it to me, and I just, again, “Ahh.” And even with that response, “Ahh” is validating. I didn’t even have to use words there. Again, it’s just showing respect, it’s like, “Man, I see how you’re feeling,” and we were able to kind of go through the conversation. I didn’t give one bit of advice. Heaven knows, she didn’t want advice. She just wanted someone to kind of sit in it with her and feel it.

And so, if you’re a little uncomfortable with these emotional situations, I do encourage you to try, the next time you have an opportunity to try it and try to just validate the person. Ask some questions, respond with the emotion that you can tell they’re feeling. And, to tie it off, you can just say, again, like we did on the example, “Hey, I’m here for you. If you ever want to just talk, let me know.” And they’ll usually say thanks, and then you move on.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And how do you feel about the “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” because sometimes people hate that? And other times, it seems completely appropriate.

Michael Sorensen
In what context?

Pete Mockaitis
Like, so if it’s tragedy or like they say a divorce, a death, an illness, you say, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and they’re like, “Oh, I’m tired of everyone saying that.” Like, I don’t know, where do you come out on this one?

Michael Sorensen
Again, it’s very situation-dependent. So, in that situation, if they actually responded like that to me, I’d be like, “Oh, hey, I’m sorry. How can I help?” It’s difficult because you kind of have to roll with the punches a little bit. I was talking with someone just the other day about this and, well, yes, I put validation into a nice clean four-step framework. The reality is it’s more of an artform than it is just a tight framework. It’s not something you can just like pull out a sheet, and go, “Okay. Michael says to say this, and this, and then you’re going to feel better, and then we’re going to ride off into the sunset.”

It doesn’t work like that. It’s a skill. It’s a tool, which means we have to figure out how to kind of use it in the right situations. And so, you’re right, certain people are going to respond to those “I’m so sorry,” or whatever, and they’re going to get defensive, especially if they’re hurt, or they’re going to come back at you, and you can still use validation again.

So, let’s just say that you had said that to me, Pete, again, I’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And if they say, “Yeah, everybody just says they’re sorry, and I don’t want to hear that. I want to move on,” then I might say, “Yeah, I don’t blame you. This is a heavy situation.” And then they might say, “Yeah, da, da, da,” and we can keep going on. But you see how I was even able to validate their frustration at me, and just say, “Wow, okay. Yeah, you know what, the more I think about it, I see how that was hard. I’m sorry for that,” or whatever the right response would be.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, I guess now I’m curious, so, you said at the very beginning, validation basically conveys, “Hey, I hear you. I understand what you’re feeling, and you’re not crazy.” I’m curious, like when folks are crazy, I mean, maybe either literally, that we’ve got like a sort of diagnosable situation, or they are kind of blending their emotions with like the exact wrong answer, like, “My boss is such a jerk, I’m going to march in there right now, slap him across the face, and tell him in no uncertain…” whatever, I don’t know.

Or, someone is like, “I’m so worthless. The world would be better off without me,” like intense, like I’m sure the right answer is not, “You know, you’re right,” not the right move there. So, yeah, in those trickier places where folks are saying something oh-so wrong, how do you think about validation?

Michael Sorensen
I’m so happy you bring this up, and I’m going to preface this by saying that the FBI uses validation in their hostage negotiations. It’s a critical part. And if you think of high-stake situations, you got people in a building threatening to kill them and themselves, and so that’s very much what you’re saying, Pete. You don’t want to just say, “Yeah, do it. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, your life’s not worth living.” You don’t want to go there. But that’s not quite what validation is and that’s where the four-step method comes into play here.

Again, first step is listening empathically. So, let’s keep it with the co-worker example and they’re really upset with their boss, and they’re about to march right in there and yell at them, well, let’s just say for a moment, we think that’s a bad idea. So, if we just say, “You can’t do that. You’re going to get fired,” how are they going to respond?

Pete Mockaitis
“Go ahead and fire me. I’m sick of this. This is war.”

Michael Sorensen
They’re probably going to go, yeah, exactly, “I don’t care.” Exactly right, they’re just going to push back, and you can push back, and they’ll push back, and you’re not going to get anywhere. And so, you have to first listen to them, “Well, what happened?” and they vent and they complain. And, again, you can validate there, so you don’t have to validate, you don’t have to say, “Yes, go in and yell at them.”

But if he says, “Well, he called me out in front of everybody in that meeting,” then you could say, “Seriously?” “Yeah, and I’m so…aargh, I’m so angry because I worked my butt off all week.” “Well, yeah, like I’d be upset too.” That’s the validation piece. It’s not, “Yeah, you should go in and yell at your boss.” It’s, “Well, of course, you’re upset given what just happened.”

And so, you keep going through that conversation. You listen, you validate, you listen, you validate. When you can tell they’ve calmed down just a little bit, or maybe they’re about to march right in the door, then that’s when step three comes into play, and you say, “Well, hold on one second. I do have a few thoughts on this. Do you mind if I share it?” Okay, now that intro, that transition to step three is big because it shows respect. If you just say, “Hold on. Don’t do it. It’s a bad idea,” again, they might get defensive and start arguing with you.

But if you, first, ask permission to share your thoughts, most people will say, “Fine. What? What is it? What are your thoughts?” and then you can say, “Maybe yelling at your boss isn’t the best idea. Have you thought about this? Or, have you thought about that?” And what you’ll find is, if you’ve listened and validated first, they are a hundred times more likely to listen to your advice when you bring it up. So, it all comes down to that order.

And, again, you see the same thing in situations where someone is angry at you, you see the same thing in the hostage negotiations. They don’t say, “Sure, kill yourself. Sure, ignite the bomb.” They say, “What’s going on? Where are you…where is this coming from?” and they talk through, they listen, they validate, and they say, “Well, can we just talk? Can we just talk face to face?” And you can see they kind of…The power of validation is to bring the emotion back down so that you can have a human-to-human conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Boy, you know, I remember you talked about FBI hostage negotiation, and we had Chris Voss on the podcast, who wrote an awesome book Never Split the Difference and did FBI hostage negotiations. And I believe there’s a story there in which they just kind of said the same thing over and over again, kind of like, “Hey, it seems like you’re scared that you’re not going to be able to make it out of there, and you’re worried about what’s going to happen to you and your family,” something along those lines, just like repeatedly, and then hours later, the dude just kind of walks out. And so, it’s wild how potent that is.

Michael Sorensen
And that’s why I joke in the book it’s like a superpower. Early on, when I started using this, in my day job, I’m a manager of about 30 people, and I was a very young manager at the time when I wrote the book, and I didn’t know how to deal with certain situations. And as I’ve started using validation, I had some pretty tense conversations, some people yelling at me, some really difficult things, I had made some mistakes, all of that. When I started using validation first, it was shocking at how it made everything easier, and helped me mend relationships, and helped me earn trust and respect.

I had a gal who once worked for me, left the company. A few years later, she was one the beta readers actually of my book. And she actually called me up after she read it, and she said, “I get it now.” She said, “I could never understand why I felt so comfortable talking to you.” And I don’t say this to pat myself on the back, but I say it to illustrate the power it has. She said, “I always felt so comfortable talking to you, and I couldn’t figure out why, and now I get it, and it’s because you listened to me and you validated me. Thank you.” So, it’s powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I’m intrigued by when you made some mistakes, how might validation work in that context? Like, “Hey, I can understand to be really frustrating that this guy…” mainly you, means you have to redo a bunch of things now. Or, how’s that go?

Michael Sorensen
Yeah, really, it just comes down to ownership, and that takes humility. It’s not an easy thing to do but if you do make a mistake, there’s no sense in beating around the bush or making an excuse. That never looks good in work or just in life. So, in the times that’s happened to me, I’m trying to think of a concrete example and I’m drawing a blank right now.

But if we just go with a hypothetical, they come back and they say, “What happened? You told me you would have this yesterday,” and I take a moment and I go, “Oh, shoot. You’re right.” And I just say, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I dropped the ball on that. I’m going to figure it out.” And they say, “Well, it threw off my whole presentation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” again, there’s a chance to validate. So, they tell me how it affects them, and instead of saying, “Well, you should’ve followed up with me,” it doesn’t look good. I own it. Again, I say, “Aargh, I’m really sorry. I overbooked myself. It sucks to be expecting something I committed to. I didn’t deliver. You’re right. How can I help?”

It’s almost like a parody but it’s honest, and there’s actually, in my opinion, a great respect that comes from that, and strength to say, “Yup, I messed up. I’m going to figure out how to make it right.” And, in most instances, people will come down on their anger pretty quickly when they see you’re not going to fight them, you just say, “Yup, I’m sorry. I see how that affects you. Let’s figure out how to make it work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Well, so then you used the phrase, “Hey, I have some thoughts. Do you mind if I share?” asking permission. Any key kind of words and phrases that you like and naturally show up a lot when you’re validating, or some key words and phrases to be banished?

Michael Sorensen
Yeah, so when you get into the validating and such, we’ve talked a lot about that. But if I may, Pete, let’s take it into that step three where you’re giving feedback because that makes a big difference. One place a lot of people trip up, and, again, this is going to sound so simple, but using the word “but” can be quite dangerous when you’re connecting two sentences together.

So, if you try to validate someone, let’s say they’re angry at me, we’ll stick with that example, and I say, “You’re right. I missed it but it’s really not that big of a deal.” Well, I just undid everything. Like, I was going down the path, I was validating, and then I said “but” and that now puts up a red flag in most people, and they’re like, “But what?” Here comes your counterargument, and I say, “It’s not that big of a deal.” Well, woosh, that’s an invalidating statement, and they’re like, “What do you mean it’s not a big of a deal?” and away we go into that cycle.

I’m a big fan of changing that word from “but” to “and.” Now, you still shouldn’t say, “It’s not that big of a deal.” But let’s say, in that situation, I say, “You’re right. I committed to do that, I didn’t. I’m sorry and I wasn’t the only one responsible for it. Can we talk about X, Y, and Z, other ways?” So, there’s the “and” connection point is very powerful, and I get that feedback a lot from people, saying, “Wow, I had no idea changing that one word,” because, for some reason, we, as humans, we really key in on that.

And if someone is saying, “Hey, I really like…” the example I used in the book is, “I like what you’ve done with your hair but…” we go, “Uh-oh, but what?” There’s something else versus “I like what you’ve done with your hair and I like it better the other way.” You still don’t want to hear that but at least it’s a little easier to hold.

And so, when you’re giving feedback to your colleagues, when you’re giving feedback to your friends, or, heck, even your boss, try to avoid the word “but” and just use “and” in there. It actually makes a pretty big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And, I’m curious, if you just don’t feel like you’re relating in any way to their emotion, in terms of you’re like, “I’m mystified as to why you’re so angry or so annoyed by this thing that really seems like nothing to me,” what do you do?

Michael Sorensen
This is where it gets a little tricky because I get this question every now and then. I didn’t address it in the book but in the years since, I’ve really given it a lot of thought. I’ve paid a lot of attention to how I still validate in those situations. First off, I do encourage you to always try to find a way to empathize. Oftentimes, it’s easy to just say, “I don’t care. I don’t care about people.” There’s a lot of value that comes from learning to empathize with people, learning to identify emotions, and that’s a bit of a different topic though.

If, in the moment, you’re like, “Dude, like what’s going on? Why are you so upset about this?” again, ask some questions first. Don’t just dismiss it out of hand and assume they’re being crazy because most people, when you really get into the full picture, act quite rationally. But if you really feel like they’re not, there is still value in, I don’t want to say lip service but, in still kind of going through the motions, and saying, “Yeah, it makes sense that you’re angry. Of course, you would be,” even if inside I’m like, “I don’t really think so,” but it does make a difference still.

Again, it’s not where I recommend going first. Always prefer genuine empathy, but at very least, you can have some sympathy, then you can at least see the emotion they’re feeling, and you can see that they’re upset because such and so and so yelled at them. And that alone can still be valuable and still be helpful to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And I guess I’m also thinking about have you really entered into their world? I guess I was recently on a fishing trip and someone was angry that another person had parked nearby our campsite and started fishing. And I actually don’t care that much about the fishing on the trip. They’re just great guys, I like hanging with them, and they go fishing so I go with them.

And so, someone is getting kind of worked up about this. And I thought, “What’s the matter? It’s a big old river or lake.” But I think, as I dove deeper into it in terms of what this person wants most is to catch big fish. It is rare they have the opportunity to go catch fish, and they perceive rightly/wrongly. I don’t actually know enough about fishing but that person’s placement there is going to diminish that, and that there are many other places he could choose from, then I can understand, “Yeah, that’d be irritating that that guy did that when he could just go somewhere else.” But it takes some doing for me to get there.

Michael Sorensen
Yes, it does, and there are times. Again, going back talking about how it’s a tool. It doesn’t mean you always have to use it. I am guilty almost every week of my wife and I’ll get into a little argument, even just have a discussion, and if she gets upset about something, I want to jump to fix it, and “I’m literally the guy that wrote the book on it.” And I’m just like, “You know what, let’s just do this, do this, fix it, and we’ll be done.” And she’s like, “Really? You’re not going to validate me at all?” And I’m like, “Ahh, crap. You’re right.”

But there are times when you have to just kind of pick and choose, and there are times also when you might just jump in. If we stick with your example there of that guy, if he comes up and he’s yelling at you because he wants your spot, you’d be like, “Dude, really? Like, it’s a campsite.” And he’s like, “Well, blah, blah, blah,” you can then choose to validate or you could choose to just dismiss it. If you paid for it, it’s rightly yours. You can walk away, you don’t have to engage with people who are upset or angry, but if you want to, it will work. Nine times out of ten, 95%-99%, I’m making out stats here, but most times it’s amazing how you can calm someone down.

And so, if he’s all upset, you say, “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. We booked it.” And he’s like, “I booked it too.” “Well, there must’ve been an issue with that. That’s really frustrating. If you came all the way down here expecting to see this, I get it. Let’s go chat with the front office at the campsite or whatever and let’s see if we can figure it out.” But just that little, “Yeah, if you expected all this and came down here,” that’s validating, and that can help tone it down just a little bit.

I’ll give you an example of, this was a few months ago now but it worked, a certain employee, who’s no longer with the company, placed an order for 40,000 T-shirts that we didn’t need, but he thought we needed them, he thought he was going to be awesome. Well, a few months later, I get a call from another guy in my team, saying, “Hey, just so you know, the T-shirts arrived. This other company who prepared them, they’re expecting payment. I don’t think we owe it to them because we didn’t approve it, so don’t worry, I’m handling it, but you just might hear about it. You might want to know.” And I thought, “Well, hold on one second. Can you send me the email thread? I want to make sure that we’re being honest here. If we said we’re going to order them, we got to pay them.”

So, he sends me the email thread, and I see this back and forth, and it was my guy was being quite invalidating, frankly. He was very kind of traditional negotiation tactics, “Hardline no, not going to happen.” And, obviously, that’s not going to go well on the other end, and it was getting really heated. And so, I actually took over the conversation and I reached out to the guy, and I said, “Hey, do you mind if we hopped on a call?” And his response was very curt, “Yeah, this time.” Period.

So, in advance of the call, I did a little bit of research, and I determined that we actually weren’t on the hook for the T-shirts, but I still wanted to smooth things over. I still wanted to do right by them. So, in advance of the call, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to come right into this, he’s going to come in ready to fight, he’s bringing his A-game, I’m just going to validate him first thing.”

So, I picked up my phone, I gave him a call, he answered, and I said hello, but then, before anything else, I said, “Hey, before we get in, I just want to apologize. This has obviously gone on far longer than either of us want. As I’m digging through, it looks messy, there’s a lot of back and forth, emotions are running high. I apologize for that. I’m hopeful that we can get on this call and just talk man to man and figure something out.”

And, literally, the shock was audible in his voice. He literally stuttered on the other end, he was like, “Oh, ah, okay. Well, what do you have in mind?” And we were able to chat, and we talked through it, and I explained my side, he explained his side, and we reached a resolution that both parties felt good about. It didn’t take long but it had been going on for months, literally months, Pete, back and forth, and tensions were running high. And in about five minutes, I was able to undo almost all that tension and find a resolution with just a little bit of listening and validating.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Well, Michael, tell me, any final key things you want to share about validation before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Michael Sorensen
I think maybe the last thing I’ll say on it is I think it’s important to point out that when I talk about validation, we’re not validating people’s worth. That’s one thing that sometimes validation gets a bad rap because people say, “Well, validate me. Tell me I’m worthy. Tell me I’m good enough.” That’s dangerous. I’m not talking about that. We’re talking about validating emotions and situations that people are dealing with.

And so, if you have a co-worker, or if you have a family member, or even a spouse, who’s constantly complaining, where they’re always just like, “Hmm, I need more. I need you to tell me that I’m good enough,” that’s a separate conversation, that’s a place for boundaries, that’s a place where having a conversation, and saying, “Hey, I care about you,” or, “You’re my buddy, and…” again, there’s the “and” instead of “but” “…and this isn’t working for me,” or, “I’m not sure how to help you because every time I give you advice, it seems to go in one ear and out the other.”

So, I think it’s an important clarification because I never want people to think that I’m saying, “Well, just tell people what they want to hear. Just tell people that they’re great and everything is going to work out.” Again, validation being a tool, you use it with other tools, and use well that earns you respect, that helps you set boundaries, that helps you earn trust with those around you. And that is why it’s such a powerful skill.

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

Michael Sorensen
The quote that I go to most often is “Action kills fear.” I don’t even know where it came from or who said, it but I stumbled across it years ago, and I print it out, and I stick it up in my offices because it’s just true. If I find myself kind of getting paralyzed or I’m uncertain about something, just take action, any kind of action, even if it’s just the first step, it unlocks that and allows you to move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Michael Sorensen
I love The Compound Effect and The Slight Edge. They’re both the same principle, two different authors, all about how small simple things build up over time to great results. And that’s been…that’s, frankly, how I got to writing the book in the first place. I committed to 15 minutes a day at least, and sometimes it would snowball into hours and into weekends on end. But 15 minutes, small simple things got me to where I am today.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Michael Sorensen
we’re talking tech tools. I’m a big fan of the TextExpander.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Michael Sorensen
Where you type in a shortcut or like a snippet, like I type in Cphone and it types out my full cellphone, or Pmail, it’s my personal email. Little things like that to save a ton of time, that and a clipboard manager. So, I copy a lot of things and paste a lot of different things. If you, listeners, don’t use those, you should check them out.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what’s the best clipboard manager for a Mac in your opinion?

Michael Sorensen
I use Copy’Em. That’s what I found thus far. There’s probably better ones but it works well for my needs.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Michael Sorensen
You can do a lot of form-filling. I don’t know, man. I use it all the time. I think it’s an underappreciated or underutilized little tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Michael Sorensen
Well, I spoke to this earlier on The Compound Effect, but it’s just these simple little things every day. So, if I have a goal in mind, or I’m a big goal-setter, I’ll break it down into tiny little chunks that I can’t not do five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, just to make sure I’m doing it.

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

Michael Sorensen
Yeah, it was, because I think off the top of my head, that idea that when people vent or complain to us, they usually already have a solution in mind; they’re not looking for advice. They’re just looking to be heard and understood. As I go into the Kindle book, in the most popular highlights, that’s number one. It’s the, “Hey, if someone is venting to you, chances are they don’t actually want your advice. They just want you to hear them and they’ll figure it out on their own.”

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

Michael Sorensen
My website is probably the best resource or the best place to find me, MichaelSSorensen.com. You can contact me via contact form there, and read a lot of my free content.

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

Michael Sorensen
The biggest thing that I’ve learned is, at least what I appreciate most, is people who really don’t use the word “can’t.” I guess it kind of comes full circle. We joked about my building my own mattress. But I’m a big believer that you can do anything. That’s so trite when we say it. I don’t mean in like, “You can be an astronaut,” though you can be. But if you want something, you can figure it out. And it just depends on if you’re willing to put in the time and the effort and the money.

And so, people on my team or at work who say, “No, I can’t do that. Can’t do that,” I hate it because it’s so small-minded. I’d much prefer to say, “Well, we probably could but it would take the world.” I’d rather say, “What would it take? How could we do it?” Even if it’s wild and out there, you’re just, “What would it take? How can we get there?”

My opinion, people bring that into the workplace, that can-do attitude, that “I’m going to figure it out no matter what it takes,” that stands out to me, and I think that is what makes people very successful in life.

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck with validating and being validated.

Michael Sorensen
Thanks, Pete. Appreciate the time. Great chatting.