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692: How to Optimize Teams and Drive Engagement Using Data with Mike Zani

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Mike Zani says: "You need to modify yourself to get the most out of your people."

Mike Zani shares data-driven approaches to improving your team’s performance.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What businesses can learn about teams from baseball 
  2. The top two predictors of team performance
  3. Top three do’s and don’ts of effective teaming

About Mike

Mike Zani is the CEO of The Predictive Index, a talent optimization platform that uses over 60 years of proven science and software to help businesses design high-performing teams and cultures, make objective hiring decisions, and inspire greatness in people. Its 8,000+ clients include Bain Capital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, DoorDash, LVMH, Nissan, Omni Hotels, and VMware. Zani is also the co-founder and partner at Phoenix Strategy Investments, a private investment fund. An avid sailor, he was coach of the 1996 US Olympic Team. He holds a BS from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Resources Mentioned

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Mike Zani Interview Transcript

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

Mike Zani
It’s great to be here. I think that’s an important task. Got to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think so too. And you’ve really done some homework on how that happens and I’m excited to dig into that wisdom with The Predictive Index and your book The Science of Dream Teams. But, first, let’s hear about you coaching the 1996 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team. How’d that go?

Mike Zani
That was one of the most romantic times of my life where you’re living some bizarre dream with these amazing athletes, and Muhammad Ali lights the torch for the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember that.

Mike Zani
It was pretty awe-inspiring. And you get to work with these amazing talents, coaching these athletes. But I think it was back then when I started down a people path, trying to figure out how to modify myself to get the most out of your athletes because everyone sort of learns differently and has different styles. And when do you use analogies? They work great for some people. When to be super literal with others? Who can handle negative feedback immediately? Some people can’t. And how to weave, come in where it’s not quite as negative, it sounds more like growth feedback? But it was that journey with those athletes that I think started me on this, and I did not know it at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, not that it’s all about the gold but I don’t actually recall how the 1996 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team did. How did we do?

Mike Zani
We had two medals out of ten events. It was actually pretty disappointing unfortunately.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. It was not as many as you hoped before.

Mike Zani
It wasn’t. And my star athletes, Kristina Farrar and Louise Van Voorhis, were in medal contention for nine of the ten days, and finished in fourth which is a very tough place to finish.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fourth, yeah. I hear you. Well, how did you cope with that?

Mike Zani
I think it’s different for the athletes. It definitely impacts them in different ways but I saw a lot of athletes who fell short of their goals and they never really sailed competitively again. They were doing it for this thing, to do something as unbelievable as the Olympics. They maybe weren’t doing it for the love of sailing. And that’s probably important, to have a love for what you do so that you keep doing it. You see those long-distance runners who, they may not run competitive marathons anymore but they still run 50 miles, 100 miles a week because that’s what they do.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, let’s dig into The Predictive Index. First of all, that’s a great name. I like predictions, I like index, and the name itself has a promise within it. What’s your organization all about?

Mike Zani
The Predictive Index helps companies sort of optimize their talent, and, we do it with a series of algorithms through assessments which feed the data model on the software, which gives companies the information they need, pre and post hire, ideally in their time of need. And we have about 700 certified partners who work with our clients to take that data from the software and from all of the algorithms and the assessments, and help bring it to life within organizations.

And the way I like to say it is every CEO has got a strategy, some good, some bad. Most have a one- to five-year financial plan to support that strategy but tragically few of them have a talent strategy. And strategies do not execute themselves. It’s the people who execute them. And it’s really surprising, most people have just boxes in Excel saying, “Hey, I’m hiring five people in Q1,” and there’s nothing about what type of people they need and what are the gaps, and how they’re going to fit on this team, and how do they change the culture, and are they high performers. And what about the ones who are there? How is it going to impact the ones that are already there? And that’s what talent optimization does.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what is the impact of using your platform versus just kind of, I guess, winging it or doing what everybody else does?

Mike Zani
Yeah, I think our number one competitor is not some other company. It’s people using the old way of doing things. Things like unstructured interviewing with resumes, which are among the greatest fiction in all of business. And somebody walks in and they have a neck tattoo and you just can’t get used to that or comfortable with that so you don’t hire them. And you hire people who sort of think the way you think or you promote people who think the way you think because you have more comfortable interactions with them as opposed to maybe creating more diverse teams.

So, I think when people aren’t doing this, some people get it right, more often than not, but that’s not very scalable. There are those gifted talent people who really invested in their own tools and frameworks. But this is really trying to make sure that you can bring it to every company, sort of a systems approach to, “How do you hire right? How do you build world-class teams? How do you make sure that the interactions between people are really optimized? How do you make sure you have an engaged and high-performing organization?” And even with all the tools, because people are messy, we still get it wrong 10%, 15%, 20% of the time. But it’s better than the two-thirds of the time that most people get it wrong and doing it the old way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are some interesting figures there in terms of how do we measure right versus wrong? And are those figures fairly accurate in terms of “Yeah, without this stuff, you probably expect to be right only a third of the time versus four-fifths of the time you could be right.”

Mike Zani
Yeah, it is hard to do that. Without really great performance analytics, it’s really hard to take it from the world of qualitative to quantitative. I think we can learn a lot from sports. In sports, 30 years ago, they used to do the same thing we did in business. Scouts used to go look at recruits in baseball stadiums and look for the five tools of, say, baseball: their running ability, throwing ability, hitting for power, hitting for average. And they would look at these tools and sometimes quantitative, most of the time it’s qualitative, and they got it wrong all the time. Five out of 100 players recruited made it to the major leagues.

And then they adopted sabermetrics using stats and analytics to predict, part of the name that you like, predictive index. How do you predict who’s going to be a higher probability to get to the major leagues and contribute? And not just contribute, it’s also contribute for the dollar, because not every team is the New York Yankees that can spend millions of dollars. It’s sort of you need to have performance for the buck.

And that attitude that sport took on, starting in baseball, they’re 30 years ahead of us in this process in terms of business because they’ve got great metrics, they’ve got great performance data. And until you have great metrics and performance data, you’re kind of guessing, “What was right? Is this a good team for this job to be done?” And we’re just starting to be able to get there so that you can have a learning machine so that you can hire, promote, manage, craft teams to super high performance and then track that performance, and, “We didn’t quite get that right. That was a good team but not a great team. Let’s keep working on that.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so you’re summarizing a lot of your wisdom over the years in your book The Science of Dream Teams. It sounds like we’ve covered it here. But what’s sort of the big idea? Is that it’s all about using science and data to engineer dream teams? Or, how would you summarize your core thesis?

Mike Zani
I think it’s a journey on yourself. There’s really a call to action for each person who manages people, and I don’t just mean managing down. I mean, managing across and managing up, that you have to adopt this discipline to have great relationships, and it actually starts with yourself. You have to know yourself. Be self-aware. Know what the things you’re good at and try and play the game on those terms. But also, just as clearly, know the stuff that you’re not good at and make sure you understand those triggers.

I think once you become that self-aware leader, you can really start attracting talent to you. And even if you’re an individual contributor, the best managers want you on their team, and you can then do that. You’ve got a culture of performance. You’ve got a culture of being engaged. You’re one of those people who always add value when you’re around your team. And you can go on this journey.

And I think the book is really a call to action to change the discipline, to take it out of the old way of subjective, qualitative, and bring it into a newer way where you can start bringing data to the equation, and we’re really in the early steps of this. The data is just starting to come on and we’re just starting to create these learning machines and prediction so that you can articulate whether you’re going to be a good fit for XYZ role on this team, doing this strategy. And it’s great because it’s tantalizingly close and a lot of companies are getting there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you walk us through in practice, like we’re thinking, “Okay, we got a role, we got a candidate, or maybe we have many candidates, how do we choose? What are sort of the step-by-step here?”

Mike Zani
Let me give you an example. I know that you’re a former consultant, high-end consulting firm. Am I allowed to mention the name?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I’ve mentioned it too many times for some of our listeners, according to the surveys. I’m sorry about that, guys.

Mike Zani
Okay. So, Bain & Company. So, at Bain & Company, you’re constantly reassembling teams into work groups based on an engagement. You might have one partner on the project, a couple of managers, half a dozen, dozen consultants and associates, and you’re constantly reassembling these teams every few months depending on the work.

And what you’re trying to do is determine, “What is the work that needs to be done on this engagement?” and then, “Is this team a good fit for that work?” So, in order to do that, we’ve mapped behavioral analytics, psychometric tools, to strategy so that, let’s just say, you’re on that 10-person team. We’ll call it a 10-person team. And you can look at the team, “Are we homogenous behaviorally or are we heterogenous behaviorally? If so, what gaps do we have? Where are we homogenous?”

And then, we can actually find out, “Are we aligned on our strategy? What is our strategy? Are we aligned on it? And is that team, as it’s currently assembled, a good fit? Maybe it’s an okay fit.” And then you’re like, “Well, what are the gaps? Okay, there’s a couple of gaps. Can we stretch to get there? Is it an easy stretch? Is it a hard stretch? Can we augment this team with some other things? Can we actually change out a few players?”

And the reason I’m picking your consulting team, because changing out a player on a consulting team, you just go to another engagement. It’s not you’re getting fired. And it’s in these reassembling teams that you can create super teams for the work to be done because a team is not inherently good or bad, but they might be a good or bad fit.

Now, I use an example. If I took the senior team for Mass General Hospital, center of excellence hospital in Boston, heavy research, they’ve got some of the best doctors, some of the best research, tons of money, and they’re near the cutting edge but they also have The Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm,” so they’re inherently risk-intolerant. They are not going to be a good team to do a startup and they wouldn’t be a good team. If a private equity firm, like Bain Capital bought Mass General, so we’re going to do a rollup of every center of excellence in every major city.

The senior team that might’ve been great at running a single center of excellence is not going to be the team to run that rollup for the private equity firm trying to put together a massive organization because they’re not going to have the risk tolerance. They’re not the right team for that job. So, it’s like assemble the team to do the work they’re supposed to do and unlock that potential and find out where there are gaps. If a strategy changes, you’re like, “We’re going to need to stretch, add someone, take someone away.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we talked about the fit. I’m thinking, I’ve been playing some Tetris lately, so I see that in my mind’s eye. So, we’ve got what is demanded of the team, certain things are necessary. And then we’ve got what the individual teammates are bringing to the table. But how do we break down the whole universe of work into a manageable set of is it parameters or competencies? I’m thinking about the Korn Ferry list right now. So, how do you break it down? Like, how many parameters or drivers or factors are we looking at? And how do we measure folks on them?

Mike Zani
There are numerous, numerous parameters you could measure, and Korn Ferry’s competencies are a good form of measurement. You’ve got these frameworks that say, “What are the skills? What are the competencies needed?” But more than skills and competencies, one level higher in prediction, the number one predictor of workplace performance is cognitive fit for a role, making sure the person has the cognitive capabilities, the learning capacity, the ability to manage complexity to deal with the requirements of that role.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess with cognitive fit, what is it they call it, G, general intelligence? I mean, are there sort of multiple flavors of cognitive fit? Or is it just all sort of like raw smart that’s going to show up, like on the GRE type cognitive stuff?

Mike Zani
Actually, you bring up a really important element of cognitive science. If you do a short format test, like a 12-minute assessment, you can see the sub-facets of cognitive, sort of linguistic, mathematical, spatial, abstract reasoning. But you have to take a longer format cognitive assessment to be able to have high degrees of validity that those sub-facets, the importance.

But, in an ideal world, if you had the time, and not every organization wants to have their people take a 90-minute cognitive assessment. It might be too much load, but you would have diverse teams. Let’s just say you’re amazing mathematically but I’m really good spatially, and we’d be a great match. And then when we’re going to publish our findings, we’re like, “Well, who’s the person really good linguistically who can write this stuff really well?” and putting together diverse cognitive teams, and you might even have people who have gaps.

And the beautiful part, if you look at the sub-facets, language is the biggest bias in cognitive-based assessments because it picks up socioeconomics, especially in the United States, and it’s a testament of our education systems. But lower socioeconomic categories do worse in cognitive, especially in the verbal part, and that picks up race and ethnicity in the U.S. which needs to be corrected for, so you cannot use cognitive as a single variable disqualifier for a role or you’ll create bias on unfortunate points like race and ethnicity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got to make sure we got the cognitive stuff. It’s like your brain can handle what’s going to be thrown at it, and so we might get a quick view in 12 minutes versus 90 minutes. By the way, what are these tools we’re using to assess in 12 minutes and 90 minutes?

Mike Zani
There’s thousands of cognitive assessments. Ours happens to be a short format that is used whether you’re a Subway sandwich artist or whether you’re a Ph.D. in biotech for Moderna. And, actually, it’s important because say, you are a Subway franchisee and you’re hiring temp workers, mostly high school and college kids for the summer, to be sandwich artists, the cognitive requirements for that role are not massively high.

But if you have a choice, you want the higher end of the range because you’re teaching them how to bake bread, how to make sandwiches, rules and processes, maybe it’s procedures for like a pandemic where you have sanitation requirements. But you don’t need the same cognitive requirements of the Ph.D. running a biotech firm. That’s legitimate. You need someone with cognitive requirements that are probably in the top decile, and you’re building those teams.

And this is no different than, “Hey, this person is fast.” You’re like, “They’re fast for a linebacker but they’re not fast for a wide receiver.” You have different requirements for the role.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now I’m curious, can you have too much of a good thing in terms of if your sandwich artist has too much cognitive power, are they going to be bored and say, “This job is lame. I’m out of here” and bounce kind of quickly? Or, is your view like, “Hey, the more the better”?

Mike Zani
Actually, there was a famous lawsuit with a detective agency where they disqualified a candidate to be a detective because of too high of a cognitive, and it went to the, I think, the State Supreme Court. The police department was saying, “Hey, it takes like three years to make a good detective. There’s a lot of learning and the job is not as exciting as it is on TV. It’s actually a pretty mundane, boring job, high repetition.” And they’re like, “What we found is that high-cognitive people get frustrated at the pace and challenge of this job and move on, so we don’t want to train you for three years for you to leave and not be a productive asset,” if you will.

And so, it’s interesting, the actual scientific data does not say that you can have too high a cognitive that your performance goes down but the curve flattens. So, it’s not like if you’re three times as smart, if you’re 99.9 percentile versus 92, it’s going to be so indiscernibly different that it’s other factors that are predicting success. So, it does flatten out.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And so then, I guess, it’s really down to personal preferences. First of all, what happened with the State Supreme Court case? How did they rule?

Mike Zani
You’re going to have read it in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mike Zani
I’m kidding. I’m kidding. No, the police department was exonerated. They had a process. They were looking at the data, and they said that, “In our estimation, people with this criteria will churn more, and we have a high cost of training.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that can happen. And so, generally, it seems like more is better but if it’s oodles and oodles more, you might have a different problem to contend with in terms of churn rate as opposed to performance. So, that’s the number one predictor, is the cognitive fit, “Do they got the mental horsepower to get it done?” And you’re about to tell us number two but then we went deep.

Mike Zani
Well, I think it’s behavioral fit, and some jobs have very tight criteria. You think of sales. The sales role, highly predictive, high dominance, low patience, great risk tolerance is highly predictive of sales success. And what’s interesting, three are subclasses of sales. You might have collaborative sales per big enterprises where one person is starting the sale process but you’re bringing in several other people to support it, like there might be sales engineering, there might be a customer service team that comes in. And that person is going to need more collaboration and more people skills to do that quarterbacking.

There could be highly technical sales which, if you’re selling data security, cutting-edge data security into the C-suite, CIO, and the tech teams, and the really brainiacs on the other side who are all introverted, you’re going to want a very introverted highly technical, high-detail oriented, high formality sales process. So, there’s sub-facets.

But then there are some roles, like product, that are completely open behaviorally. You can have success in product development with almost any behavioral profile but then you want to look at not the fit for the role. You want to look at fit for the team. Because if you already have eight people on this team, and maybe they’re all one profile, you don’t want more of that. You want some diversity, or the manager of that team might be like, “I’ve already got two of those. I can’t handle a third. They’re good but they’re a real handful with my personality, and I’m the manager of the team.” So, you start crafting and architecting.

But the short story is, some positions are really open from a behavioral benchmark and some are much tighter. And we provide companies tools so that they can actually create those benchmarks, as well as we feed them from our data source. We feed them suggestions, “For roles like these, we suggest these behavioral profiles,” but then we let them refine it for their companies.

Pete Mockaitis
And just as we sort of segmented cognitive fit into the four sub-facets, you talked about a behavioral profile. What are the ingredients or sub-facets that we can characterize people on as being high or low and that really matter?

Mike Zani
Each tool is different. Our tool measures four primary factors that are commonly found in the workplace: dominance, extroversion, patience, and formality. And we measure it in high or low on a normalized Bell curve. So, there’s someone who could be four standard deviations high dominance. And while you might want high dominance, you may not want that much.

And then we actually measure combinations of those factors. So, high dominance and low formality make you very risk-tolerant. Whereas, high formality and low dominance makes you highly execution-oriented and risk-intolerant. So, it’s not just the four factors that you measure but the interplay between them that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, this is fascinating, and so a lot of juicy conceptual stuff to ponder. I’d love it if we could maybe shift gears a bit, Mike, and hear some just, boom, best practices, whether someone is going to go deep into these fun assessments or they’re not. What are the things that professionals need to start doing and stop doing to have more dream teams according to science?

Mike Zani
I think the number one thing that people need to stop doing is overweighting their own opinion. Human beings are so good at heuristics. So, you can see a dog and, within milliseconds, know, “Is a type of dog that I want to pet? Or, is this a type of dog that I want to pull my hands back, and I’m concerned?” To even the point of, “Is this a dog that I should be running from?”

And so, we’re good at that heuristics, and false negatives are false positives happen all the time. We’re actually, we’re good at the heuristics but our rates of being right and wrong are really bad, so like about 50%. But if you run from a dog you shouldn’t have, then you just look silly, but you’re still safe. So, it’s a good thing and we’ve evolved it through evolution. But those same heuristics will say, “Is Pete giving me eye contact? He looks kind of shifty.” And that’s a false read, “Maybe when Pete is thinking, he’s introverted and looks to the side.” That doesn’t mean it’s good or bad.

So, people bring all of these conscious and unconscious bias to bear. And then, like driving, if you interview drivers, 90% of people think they’re above average at driving, which is impossible. I think the same holds true, 90% of people think they’re a good read of people, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m a good read. I would not hire this person. This is not a good idea.” And they’re wrong, and they have these biases. First and foremost, we need to get rid of that. And if you don’t get rid of that, you’re going to continue doing it in the third of the time getting it right.

I think the next thing people need to get rid of is the over-reliance on what we call the briefcase, which is the resume. There’s the head, the heart, and the briefcase. And the briefcase is the book of experience you’ve had, you’re like, “Pete, you’ve had three great jobs in customer service. You’ve had it at companies a lot like ours, and you’ve kept going up the line from individual contributor to manager to director. We want you to be the senior director of customer service at our firm.” And that makes sense. It sounds good but teaching someone customer service, literally if you break it down, takes a month.

And finding someone is a good manager really has nothing to do with their resume. So, you can throw out a lot of that resume because it’s a false reliance, you’re going, “Oh, this person must be great at customer service.” And there are roles that you need a lot of experience, “I want my surgeon to have done this surgery a few times before,” but most of the roles in business are not mission critical like surgeon.

You can train this and companies under-invest in their learning and development, so that you can hire thinner resumes and train, but don’t shortchange the behavior, the cognitive, and the passion, the heart, making sure they’re a good fit for your organization, and they have the type of cultural qualitative stuff that will succeed in your organization, that gets them up in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued by…so we talked about the cognitive and the behavioral, and so we got assessments for that. How do I get after whether they got the heart?

Mike Zani
It’s difficult. Those tests are really hard to do predictably. I want to pick on grit. I think grit is an amazingly cool sort of metric to try and get your arms around. So, Angela Duckworth wrote the book Grit, and I got to ask Angela, “How do you measure grit in mission-critical situations?” And she goes, “It’s very difficult because the test is easy to game. You ask questions like, ‘When faced with a challenge, do you roll into the fetal position or do you assault the hill?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Never. Always.

Mike Zani
And you’re like, “Hmm, I normally roll in a fetal position but I don’t want to tell you that so I’m going to check the climb the mountain.” Now, there are ways to test for grit. If you look at the Army and bootcamp, you take these rookies through bootcamp, and it’s really hard to fake bootcamp for whatever it is, 12 weeks. So, at the end of bootcamp, they know, they’re like, “This batch of people has a lot of grit. This middle, these, not so much.” But most people don’t have 12 weeks and a bootcamp to measure that factor.

But we coach people to have structured interview processes around their culture. So, you’re trying to get people to test themselves in or out of the culture, that if I realized that, let’s say I’m running a nonprofit mission-driven organization, and speaking with you, I’m realizing, “Pete, you seem pretty financially motivated.”

Pete Mockaitis
Cash is king, Mike.

Mike Zani
I’m like, “We do not pay top 50%.” That’s right. And I’m like, “If you’re not connected to this mission, you’re not going to make it here because you’re going to want to make money and have promotions beyond what social enterprises is willing to do at this time.” So, you need to really send like a beacon, your culture, your cultural mores, your way of working, and get people to be like, “I really want to be part of it,” or, “That scares me. I don’t want to be at all part of this.”

And people can start self-selecting in or out, but you really need to broadcast loudly and have some structured interviewing to help find out what’s at heart, and it’s still difficult. It’s easier with internal hires than with fresh material from the outside world.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s handy. Well, lay it on us, any other quick do’s and don’ts that we should keep in mind for getting more dream teams going?

Mike Zani
Yeah, I really think you need to train your managers to be good managers. I think the management construct is a little flawed. So, if you’re a good performer individual contributor, they start giving you resources. You manage a process at first and you hold people accountable to that process. You might manage a project and then you do a good job, and they give you more resources. Soon, you have people reporting to you and a little budget. And then you wake up in the morning, going, “Gosh, I got to manage my people. How do I do that?” So, you look back and you say, “Oh, I had a good manager once. I’m going to manage like them.”

And that just means that that manager managed you the way you wanted to be managed and that’s why you thought they were good. We need to teach managers to modify themselves to be flexible and pliable in their styles so they can actually get the most out of their people. And I go back all the way to the first comment about the Olympics when, even as a coach, even as a teacher, you need to modify yourself to get the most out of your people.

And I think when a manager realizes their job is to leverage their skills to get the most out of their people, that is what managers should do. We have to reinvest in the development of our management corps so they really can be world-class managers of people, so they can get the most out of their dream teams.

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

Mike Zani
No, I would say if you are unhappy with how stuff is being done, talent is being managed in your organization, look at your organization and find out, “Does the head of talent, whatever they’re called, chief people officer, chief human resources officer, are they reporting directly to the CEO or not?” I think that is the number one predictor of whether a company takes talent seriously. Because if you think the two most important assets in a modern business, first, people, 65% of an income statement of your expenses is people or people-related.

So, the new triumvirate is the CEO, the CFO, and the Chief People Officer. And that Chief People Officer better be reporting to the CEO because why wouldn’t the most important asset, 65% of your expenses, be reporting to the Chief Executive Officer? So, you can find out whether your organization is taking it seriously.

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

Mike Zani
Yeah, Sir Francis Drake wrote this prayer when he had to tell his crew they were sailing around the world, and the only one who had ever done that before was Magellan, and most of them died.

I’m not going to quote the whole poem or prayer, but he does say, “Where the storms will show your mastery,” and I always hang onto that because I think when things really start going sideways, like the beginning of the pandemic, that you have to dig deep for the whole team the entirety. Like, the storm is going to show our mastery and we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to prove that all the work and all the talent that we have comes to bear right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Mike Zani
I’m going to go back to The Goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Mike Zani
The reason I like The Goal is once you learn that concept of looking for the bottleneck in everything you do, take a systems or operations approach, you actually see it everywhere. I see it with my kids, they’re like, “I need more socks.” I’m like, “No, you don’t. You need to wash your socks more.” I love The Goal. I have two boys; we have a lot of sock problems.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, it gets quoted back to you often?

Mike Zani
There’s this concept that I mentioned in the book, and you may know the framework creator, Jim Allen. He’s a partner in the UK office of Bain, came up with, “Front of T-shirt, back of T-shirt.” And front of T-shirt is all the things that you’ve been given jobs for, your superlatives. You puff up your chest when you hear them and your mom would probably rattle them off. The back of T-shirt stuff is not as easily identifiable for the wearer of the shirt. But people who know the subject know the back of T-shirt and can say it just as loudly as the front but only when they walk away from you because it’s inappropriate to say it.

So, the really self-aware person looking for what’s on the back of your T-shirt, finding out these things that can manifest themselves at bad times and take you out. The reason Jim Allen brought this up is if you’re about to become a partner at a major consulting firm, the front of T-shirt is clear. You wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have a massive front of T-shirt. But it’s, “Are there things in the back that’s so out of control or egregious or triggered so frequently that we just can’t let you get to that next tenure level?”

And this framework has a lot of legs, and it’s in the book, I mentioned it. I give Jim Allen credit as often as I possibly can. But a lot of people really go on to that because going on a journey to find out, “What’s on your T-shirt? What’s on the front? What’s in the back? What are the triggers? How do they take me out? And how do I live with it because you’re never going to get rid of these things?”

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

Mike Zani
For the book, I would point them to DreamTeams.io, that’s the book’s website, and you can take some free assessments there, and read a sample chapter. For more about The Predictive Index, PredictiveIndex.com has a lot of content on talent optimization, all free that you can really start snacking on to start learning about this discipline change that we all need to go through.

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

Mike Zani
Yeah, create better workplaces. I think if we send home our workers more energized because they enjoy what they do, we’re going to create a better world, create better parents, spouses, homeschooling individuals, community members. So, create better workplaces. We spend too much time working there to let people go home de-energized and unhappy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Mike, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much luck to be on many dream teams in your future.

Mike Zani
Pete, thank you for having me and I really appreciate the work that you do.

691: How to Listen Like You Mean It with Ximena Vengoechea

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Ximena says: "Listening really can be learned. It's a skill just like any other."

Ximena Vengoechea breaks down the formula for effective listening.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The psychological trick to help you stay in the conversation 
  2. The questions that create better conversation
  3. The cues to look out for in a conversation 

 

About Ximena

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, and illustrator whose work on personal and professional development has been published in Inc., The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Huffington Post. She is the author of Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection (Portfolio/Penguin Random House). 

She is a contributor at Fast Company and The Muse, and writes Letters from Ximena, a newsletter on tech, culture, career, and creativity. She is best known for her project The Life Audit. An experienced manager, mentor, and researcher in the tech industry, she previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

Resources Mentioned

Ximena Vengoechea Interview Transcript

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

Ximena Vengoechea
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom about listening but, first, I want to hear how your experience in user experience research helped you understand and think about this whole world.

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. So, user research is a field and technology that I think not everyone is familiar with. I think of it as one of the more people-centric roles in tech, and my job as a user researcher is really to understand people and to get to know their needs and their motivations and perceptions, ultimately in order to help companies build better products.

And, for me, my specialty is in qualitative research, and so what that means is that the tools of the trade that I’m often using are conversations, workshops, interviews, and, crucially, listening. And so, a lot of the lessons that come from my experience in the UX lab, in the book, I’ve sort of translated them into everyday world, like circumstances and conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing and I imagine listening well can make or break the difference between getting that huge insight that makes the product fantastically better and just being blindly unaware that that is an issue for people. Go ahead.

Ximena Vengoechea
No, I was going to just agree with you. Yes, in the sense that when you are conducting a session and you’re trying to uncover a set of insights, if you are distracted by your own thoughts or if you believe too deeply in the product that you’re testing, and let that bias get in the way, then that’s definitely going to affect the outcome and what you’re able to learn in terms of that key set of insights that you’re trying to uncover.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you share with us a story, either from your own experience or someone you know who’s been working with your tools, where you saw such a transformation in terms of the listening got upgraded and, wow, what a cool result emerged from that?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes. So, several years ago, I was conducting a study on meal planning, so I wanted to know, “How do people cook? How do they meal-plan? How do they budget for their meals?” And I remember that there was a really strong hypothesis on the team that certain features were sort of must-have features and others were less important. And, specifically at the time, there was a really strong interest in using things like voice activation in the kitchen, and it sort of made sense that you’re cooking and so you want to be able to tell Siri or Alexa or whomever, “Pull up that recipe. Tell me what to do next,” handsfree so that you can chop and do other things.

And, at the same time, it also kind of felt like a very “tech” kind of feature, like a very Silicon Valley desire. And so, one of the things that I did was I scheduled these sessions and we went out to Chicago, which felt a little more representative than the Bay Area of maybe the broader population, and we did cook-a-longs. So, I interviewed people but I also observed them in their kitchen. And we often think of listening as just using your ears but this was a great example of using your ears and your eyes, where you’re observing what someone is doing.

You have all of these questions in the moment that you want to ask them, but you have to really kind of catch yourself and learn to harness some patience because, if I were to interrupt a participant every time they moved from working on their phone to a cookbook or the back of the pasta box, if I had a question around, like, “Oh, do you normally do that?” that would totally change, it would completely alter the course of their actions. And, at worse, someone might begin to perform for me and think, “Oh, she wants me to cook in a certain way,” or, “She wants me to use my iPad but not my recipe cards,” which was certainly not the case.

So, in that study, that was an example of being able to go and immerse myself in an environment, crucially picked people who weren’t necessarily like me or my group of colleagues, and bring in both the aspect of listening, which is about asking questions and creating space for others, but also that observation piece and being patient and not letting that instinct, that I think many of us have in conversation, to say the first thing that pops into our head or ask that question right away, but instead just to take a beat instead and see what we can learn that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then so, in doing that, I’m curious, did you learn what you were seeking to learn? What was the takeaway, the insight, the aha? Are people into the voice-activated business or not as much?

Ximena Vengoechea
At the time, it turned out to not be a crucial feature and it was something that we didn’t pursue. I think the sort of less sexy but really basic features became much more important, like being able to filter and say, “I’m a vegetarian so don’t show me recipes that have meat in them,” for instance, or, “I’m lactose intolerant. I want to only see recipes that don’t have dairy.” Those kinds of basic but really important functionality end up trumping the sort of bells and whistles of anything like voice activation.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, having spent so much of your career doing listening and you’ve put some of your wisdom in the book of yours, Listen Like You Mean It, what are some of the most surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made along the way about how we listen and form connections here?

Ximena Vengoechea
Well, I think one of the biggest takeaways and maybe the most counterintuitive thing that I’ve learned about listening is that we have this idea, when we think about listening, that we’re there for the other person and that it’s all about the other person. And that’s true, we are there to learn about someone else. But we also, critically, are bringing in so much of ourselves into conversations. And in order to really be an effective listener, you have to build some self-awareness about exactly what you’re bringing in.

So, those thoughts that you’re bringing into conversations, the emotions you’re bringing into a conversation, your personal experience, your personal history either with that person or a topic, all of those things are part of what make us unique but they’re also part of what can prevent us from fully engaging and listening to another person. So, it’s an interesting dynamic when you want to be there for someone else, but you really also need to be kind of tracking what’s going on for yourself in any given moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then let’s hear it, the big idea with the book Listen Like You Mean It. To what extent do you think folks are listening like they mean it? What’s the state of listening today?

Ximena Vengoechea
I would say we could probably all be doing a lot better. I think most of us are typically engaging in what I would call surface listening mode. So, we are catching enough of what the other person is saying in a given moment to nod and smile, be polite, to keep our relationships more or less intact, but we’re only catching the literal, the surface level of what’s being said, and we’re often missing the subtext, the meaning beneath what’s being said, and also the emotions behind what’s being said.

And I think that that, when you’re able to go all the way down to the level of emotions, that’s where the real human-to-human connection occurs, and that’s where I think we could all be playing…we could be going much deeper in our conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, so then could you maybe give us a demonstration here between what surface listening looks, sounds, feels like versus the deeper listening that creates the connections?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, surface listening, that is something where you’re catching a little bit but you’re also engaging in those thoughts that are running through your head. You might be thinking about your to-do list, or maybe you’re in a meeting and thinking, “Okay, I’ve already heard enough. I know what I need to do. I can tune out now or start on my list of action items,” or maybe we are kind of missing that the other person is upset or is having some strong emotional response where we’re just not tracking that.

Whereas, empathetic listening is when that thought comes up that we’re distracted or we’re creating that to-do list, it’s noticing that and it’s going, “Oh, okay. I’m getting distracted, let me come back to center.” Or, it’s noticing that we’re having an emotional response to something, and saying, “Oh, you know what? I’m feeling my throat start to tighten up a little bit, I’m feeling my chest start to pound a little bit. I’m having an emotional response. Let me see if I can center myself before returning to this conversation.” So, it’s about tracking those things and then returning to the present and being there for someone else.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, in practice, if we’ve got other thoughts going on or emotional reactions and such, how do we just stop and return? Do you write them down, your extraneous thoughts? Or, is there a mantra or a trick either with your mind or your body? How do we return?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s less about trying to forever stop those thoughts because I think even meditation experts would say, “It’s not like you have a completely blank mind. It’s just becoming aware of those thoughts and acknowledging them.” So, I recommend a trick that psychologists are using in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is labeling.

And so, that is actually saying in your head, “I am being distracted by this thought,” or, “I’m having this response,” so you’re labeling it. That helps you release it. Other things that can be helpful, one mantra that can be helpful is reminding yourself that if it’s really important, the thought is going to come back to you. Typically, that’s the case. We sometimes get nervous and want to cling to every thought that comes into our mind, but the really, really important ones tend to come back to us.

And then I also recommend focusing on the emotions of what’s being said. Sometimes we’re so caught up in trying to capture all the details, like there’s a tendency to want to write everything down in a conversation, or take copious notes, but you will remember if someone is upset or confused or stressed, and that’s the thing to hone in on. And so, if you can give yourself the benefit of the doubt of, “Okay, if I can get the emotion, the rest will follow,” that can also relieve some of the anxiety around, “I have to jot everything down right now.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, how do we go about getting to the emotion? Like, are there…? Because, in some ways, it just seems some people just intuitively just do this and others don’t. So, if you don’t, then how do you start?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. So, part of it is coming into conversation with what I call listening mindset, and that’s bringing in humility, curiosity, and empathy, and that’s different than how we normally show up in conversation, which is often we’re bringing in our own assumptions or opinions or ideas, and this is really about creating space for someone else. So, humility is taking the position of a student rather than an expert, and reminding yourself that there’s something that you can learn from the other person.

Curiosity is taking that a bit deeper by asking questions, asking in particular open-ended questions that allow the other person to lead the way. And then empathy is tapping into their emotional experience, not in the sense that you have to have shared a given experience. Maybe someone has just been laid off and you have not been laid off so you don’t know exactly what that feels like but you probably have some idea of what it feels like to grieve over something that you thought you had and no longer have, or to experience something like shame over that. And so, it’s tapping into those emotions as well. And all of these are really about shifting the focus away from yourself and towards another person.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s nifty. And I think sometimes it’s tempting and it may even really be the case that you know way more about something than the person that you’re listening to does. But I imagine you’ve got some suggestions when that’s the case. What do we do there?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, it’s a great point. Because I think when we do have a given level of expertise, those are the moments that are often the hardest to set that aside and really listen to the other person. So, in that case, I recommend asking yourself, “What else?” Like, “What else can I learn here? Even if I have expertise, what else might I learn? And, specifically, what can I learn about this other person?”

So, maybe there’s a topic that you’re a wiz at, maybe it’s like personal finance or something like that. Okay, so maybe you’re not going to learn much more from this person about that topic, but what does they’re talking about this topic tell you about them and how they relate to you, to this conversation, to that topic at large?

So, it’s looking for other threads, it’s looking for understanding someone else’s expertise, and that expertise may just be their lived experience. That’s what they’re an expert in, and you can learn something from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And then with curiosity, it’s funny, sometimes I’ve got tons of curiosity and sometimes I just don’t care if I’m just going to be really blunt and honest about it. So, I’d like to be curious. I feel like that’s the person I aspire to be. So, if curiosity isn’t naturally bubbling up, what do you recommend?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. So, I think this is somewhat common. I think we all have topics that we’re not naturally interested in, and that’s okay. And I think, in this case, you’re looking for what’s the overlap maybe between the other person’s interest and your interest. So, to give a tangible example, in the book I talk about sports as not being my personal thing. It’s something that I struggle to and pay attention to and really focus. And if my husband is talking about sports, I have a couple of options. I could totally tune out, and say, “Hey, I’m not the sports type so we’re not going to talk about that.” That’s probably not going to go over super well. Or, I can try and find something that I’m interested in that overlaps with what he’s interested in.

And, in my case, something that I know about myself is I’m interested in people and I’m interested in their stories. So, if I can get the conversation away from the scoreboard to, “Tell me about the coaches. Tell me about the team dynamics. Tell me about their rituals,” that’s interesting to me and it’s interesting to him. So, you’re looking for that sort of overlap between two interests, and that’s where you can start to tug and have a pretty interesting conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s clever and what’s funny is that is I’m thinking about the Olympics. That’s exactly what they always do. So, we got this sport, and then we go to zoom in on the Olympian’s life and their childhood and their history and their dedication and their story and their difficulty. And I think they do it because it works, in terms of, “Okay, we’re trying to maximize the viewership. We’re going to need to do more than just fancy triple axel spins on the ice-skating rink or running really fast on the track. We’re going to have to go there to rope in all the more folks.”

Ximena Vengoechea
People like me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s a really lovely example. Let’s go with, I’m just going to put you on the spot here with another one. Boy, I get a little bit glazed over when we talk about like compliance-accounting things. It’s funny. Except, as I recall some conversations with my accountant, except when we’re discovering opportunities to save on taxes, I was like, “What, I can do that? Oh, wow, that’s amazing.” Like, I get really jazzed. So, I guess there’s one example there but I’ll ask you to do the same. And maybe you’re into that, I don’t know. But how might you curiously maneuver into a fun place there?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. Well, I think one thing I’ll caveat is that you’re not always going to maneuver into a fun place but you will maneuver somewhere. So, in the case of something like accounting and compliance, those topics that kind of leave you with eyes glazed over, if there’s not an obvious thread, if there’s not an obvious overlap that you can kind of pull at, and this is a conversation that you kind of need to have and you need to be present for, like it’s important, another thing that you can do is to look for the underlying need. So, what does the other person need from this conversation, need particularly from you in this conversation? And, in some cases, it’s going to be really obvious, in some cases it’s not going to be obvious, but you’re looking for, “What is the need and how can I meet it?”

So, maybe the conversation about compliance is super boring but there’s a need there for you to approve something or for you to sign off on something. The sooner you can uncover that need, the sooner you can meet it, the sooner you can have a different kind of conversation, or talk to someone else. And so, sometimes when you are looking for that common ground, it is about extending the conversation, sometimes it is about being more efficient with the conversation and just tuning in more quickly to, “What is the other person trying to get out of this conversation with me?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, as we’re listening for emotions, are there particular signs, indicators, that you’re on the lookout for in terms of vocal intonation or facial expressions? Like, I’m thinking about we had former FBI agent Joe Navarro who wrote “What Every Body Is Saying.” That was fun. So, I guess I’m curious, are there particular signals that grab your attention or you proactively look out for?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, definitely. I think the biggest thing that I look for is a change over the course of the conversation. So, if someone starts out speaking in measured tones or a deliberate even pace and then suddenly speeds up, or their pitch changes in some way, that’s something that I would want to pay attention to and try and figure out, if the topic is changed, or if they no longer feel safe in the conversation, or suddenly do.

So, we’re looking for or listening for a shift. Certainly, body language is part of that. So, I’m familiar with Joe Navarro’s work, and he talks about where your feet are pointing. So, someone can be looking at you eye to eye but their feet are pointing towards the door, and that’s a tell that maybe they’re ready to leave the conversation and just haven’t been able to articulate it.

He also talks about collar bone, like neck touching as a self-soothing mechanism. If you’ve ever seen somebody play with their collar, that kind of thing. So, you’re tracking voice and tone and body language, and also, obviously, what they’re saying as well. And I think it can be hard to do if someone is not explicit, if someone doesn’t explicitly say, “I’m really upset about X.” Sometimes it’s obvious that they are upset and we just need to ask about it.

Other times, we have to kind of feel around and they’re also feeling around in conversation, and so you’re listening for things like, literally, “I feel like…” when we place the word “I feel…” or if someone says, “I’m swamped with…” Okay. Well, that’s interesting. They’re underwater. They feel overwhelmed and under water. Do they feel under pressure and under water?

So, you’re listening for certain cues, signals in terms of what they’re saying as well that you can, again, get curious about, so that it’s less, “Oh, I’m swamped,” and you’re like, “Yeah, me too.” But, “Oh, you’re swamped. Oh, what’s that like? So, what’s happening? What’s on your plate? And how do you feel about that? How do you feel about having such a busy schedule?” That’s going to have a different outcome in terms of a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, let’s say, so you pick on some emotions, and I guess maybe talking about the connecting side of things, what’s the best way to work with that? I guess I’m just imagining, like you could say, “It sounds like you’re really upset.” Sometimes that’s the right thing to say and sometimes it’s not. But how do you think about that?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes, that’s a good question in the sense that we’re not mind readers so we don’t always know what the other person wants, but this is where I think there’s two things that can be really helpful here. One is knowing what your default listening mode is, so how you usually how you tend to hear things in conversation. Maybe you’re someone who tends to hear things at an emotional level; or someone who is more of a problem-solver, they tend to hear things through the lens of a problem to be solved; or a mediator, someone who tends to hear things through the lens of, “Well, what does this person think? What did that person think? How can we make sure that everybody’s point of view is present here?”

And all of these modes are good and useful but need to be matched to the current moment and situation, and that’s the need. That’s going back to, “What is this person’s need?” So, if you don’t know what the need is and you don’t know your default mode, then it’s going to be very hard. You are going to be taking a guess when you say, “Hey, it sounds like you’re upset.” You’re kind of going out on a limb there to see if that’s what they need.

But if you’re able to identify your default listening mode, then you have a little bit of a gut check. So, you can check with yourself, “Okay, my instinct is to offer advice here. Is that what’s really needed? What does this person need?” Sometimes it will be obvious to you because you have a personal history with them, and you know, “Oh, this, for instance, colleague always talks around their requests. They don’t say point-blank, ‘I need another resource for this.’ They kind of give you the long and winding road.”

Sometimes you won’t have that context, so here’s where asking clarifying questions is a great path forward and so you can ask things like, you can say, “My instinct is to offer advice. Would that be useful here?” Or, “I actually have a similar experience. Would you like to hear how I’ve navigated this in the past?” Or, and I think this is the most general clarifying question but really useful one, is, “Would you like me to listen or respond?” Because sometimes there is nothing for us to do, and I think that’s very hard for us to internalize. But the only thing to “do” is to bear witness to someone else especially when it’s emotional.

And so, if they’re sharing something and we’re not sure, we can be there with them and give them that space, and maybe reflect back what they’re saying because it’s affirming, or maybe just check in with them on what would be useful in that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a beautiful question because it’s like because you can respond any number of ways and that maybe you hadn’t even anticipated. Because I imagine, in my imaginary conversation I’m having, which you’ve said this to me, I can imagine saying all kinds of things, like, “What I need from you right now is to tell me I’m doing a great job.” It’s like, “Well, okay, that would not have occurred to me but, yeah, I’ve got tons of things to say about that, and so glad you asked. And here we go.” Or, it might be, “You know what would be awesome is if you could somehow just make hours appear in my life because things are insane.” It’s like, “Oh. Well, sure. Well, hey, how about you don’t bother with these three meetings that we got scheduled.” It’s like, “Oh, cool.”

And so, it feels actually kind of rare that someone would just ask that question and, an effect, is really giving a gift. That’s like, “Oh, all right. I am at your service.” And somehow it feels a little bit more specific and real and meaningful than, “Let me know I could be helpful to you,” which feels like that happens a lot in conversations of like a network-y format. And it’s funny because I never quite really know what I should ask for because it’s like, “Well, if you want to like, you know, promote the crap out of the podcast, that’d be great.” Whereas, when it’s seated in a conversation, you say it like that, it goes, “Okay. Well, yeah, here is really what I need from you.”

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, and I think those other questions that you’re mentioning are hard to respond to. They’re so broad. They’re so vague. I like the question of, “Would you like me to listen or respond?” also because it gives you two options. It gives someone something tangible to respond to. And, usually, the response, the actual need, is what they’ve been trying to say maybe implicitly.

Maybe they haven’t been able to explicitly say, “Hey, what I really need from you right now is to feel supported, and here’s how you can do that.” Or, maybe they thought they were saying that. Like, most of us aren’t very practiced at being explicit in expressing our needs. And so, offering this question is a really gentle way of saying, “I am here for you and you can guide me in a way that would be most helpful to you in this moment.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. Well, so that was a lovely question there. Can you share with us any other favorite phrases, questions, that you just love and are very versatile and useful in many conversations or maybe some phrases, words, questions that you don’t love and we’d probably be better off losing them or using them much less frequently?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, so I would say this is where the type of questions you ask really can make a big difference in conversations. So, we’re often not really paying attention to the questions we ask and they can be leading or biased in some way, and those questions, they don’t take the conversation anywhere. They end in one response or, yes or no responses, they tend to be close-ended in nature.

And so, that’s questions that start with do, is, or are. For example, “Are you nervous about tomorrow’s presentation?” “Are you nervous about this meeting?” That suggests that the person might have reason to be nervous, which maybe they should be, or maybe that’s your own, your nervousness being projected onto someone else. You’re going to get a very different response than if you start out with something more open-ended, like a how or a what question, “How do you feel about tomorrow’s presentation?” Okay, now the person can say, “I’m super excited about it. Like, I’m stoked and I’m ready to go,” which is a totally different response than we were leading them earlier. So, I think shifting from close-ended to open-ended questions is key.

And then the other thing I would say is to avoid having too open of a conversation, where the conversation is just like so broad and sprawling. You also do want to have handy follow-ups in your pocket. And so, those follow-ups if there’s a thread that’s particularly interesting or promising, you can say something like, “Oh, say more about that,” or, “What else?” or, “Tell me more,” or one that I really like is just to say, “Oh, and that’s because…” So, whatever it is they said earlier, I ask, “Oh, because?” and then the person will naturally fill it in. So, you have both the open-ended questions and then these gentle nudges that keep the conversation going.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s lovely about that, “Oh, and that’s because…” is that it, well, it’s much less defensiveness-provoking than “Why? But why?” It’s like, “Explain yourself,” like an interrogation. Whereas, “Oh, and that’s because…” is effectively a why without the threat. So, that’s cool.

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, and that’s why I don’t recommend asking why very often. Of course, we all want to know why but it does sound defensive to our ears. And so, you can ask the question of why in a different way using, “That’s because…” or even, “How do you feel about that?” or, “What do you make of that?” Again, those how and what to start to get the why without kind of grating on the other person’s ears.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And then, I’m curious, when it comes to the third part of your book is about resting and recharging. Well, hey, I’m all about resting and recharging, but didn’t expect to see that in a book about listening. So, what’s the importance of this and how do we do it well?

Ximena Vengoechea
Well, I felt this was really important to include in the book because when you are practicing this type of listening where you are getting down to this emotional level and just really past the surface, it does take work and it is a natural side effect of this kind of listening to feel a little bit drained. It’s almost a sign of good listening at play. It’s like when you go out and you have a good workout, you’re excited but you’re also a little bit tired afterwards.

And so, we want to be able to take care of ourselves so that we don’t push ourselves too far because I think a real risk, if we’re not careful with this kind of listening, is that we start to create space for someone else in a conversation and we never take up space ourselves. So, become a sort of vessel for receiving everybody else’s feelings without having that same care and support returned to us, which really just means that the conversation has moved from a dialogue probably to a monologue where we’re on the receiving end of it, so we don’t want to go that far.

So, ways that you can take care of yourself in the process are thinking about things like what’s your magic number in terms of the amount of these kinds of conversations you can have a day, and how do they need to be distributed throughout your day. So, really concretely, when I was managing a team, I remember in the very beginning, I would try and stack my one-on-ones, like, “Okay, I’ll do all my one-on-ones on Tuesdays. We’ll just do them back-to-back and we’ll bang them out,” and I was exhausted by the end of it, and I also, frankly, wasn’t doing a great job of listening because I would be context-switching from one person’s challenges to the next without having taking a beat to pause and breathe.

And so, in my case, I learned, “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have five back-to-back one-on-ones in a day. You should maybe try and spread those out over the course of a week or to a couple on one day and a couple on another day.” So, it’s about figuring out what is your magic number, how many of these kinds of conversations can you have effectively where you’re still listening and not exhausted, what kind of breaks can you have in between.

And I talk to a lot of people who say, “Well, I’m not in control of my calendar. Like, I am at the mercy of my calendar. So, what do I do then?” And to that, I say you can always take a 90-second breather in between meetings. Just you’re taking a little bit of a palette cleanser to reset, to say, “Okay, this person just gave me this. I’m going to put it aside, and now I’m going to be present for the next conversation.” So, even if it’s a microbreak, that becomes really, really important for helping you keep things running along.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, in a 90-second, a microbreak, what are some great things to do that make a world of rejuvenation difference in just a few seconds?

I’ll do some sharing right now. I’m taking a look at my silent mini-refrigerator in my office, which is pretty wild. It emits no noise, which I like for recording. And I have a bin of water, a little Tupperware bit of water, that’s cold, and I will shove my face in it. That’s weird but there’s cool science behind it – the mammalian dive reflex. And when you stick your face in cold water, you’d wake up in a hurry. So, that’s one of my quick rejuvenation rituals. I’d love to hear what you and others do that makes for some great recharging for more listening in a short amount of time.

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. So, I think it could be something like that. It could be maybe a more toned-down version, like just splashing water on your face, like room temperature water on your face can also maybe give you a version of that. But, yeah, another thing that you can do is to take those 90 seconds and write down every thought that comes into your mind, just like brain dump it out because sometimes that’s what we’re holding onto in between sessions. So, you can just write it and release it that way.

Sometimes just our closing your eyes, like literally just closing your eyes. Set a timer if you want, think about whatever you want, that can do it too. Don’t use that 90-second microbreak for doom-scrolling, for news-reading, or social media. It’s not going to have the same effect. It’s probably just going to cloud things even further. And then I also think there are certain mantras that you can repeat, especially if you are in a profession or in a role where you’re going to be carrying something, kind of on someone else’s behalf, where you can say, “Okay, this isn’t mine to keep. This doesn’t belong to me. I can safely let this go.” That’s especially useful, let’s say, if you’re in a caregiving role or industry, something where you’re really taking on someone else’s emotions.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I think the last thing that I’ll mention, and I hope this is is clear from this conversation, but I think we often think about speaking, presentation skills, effectively negotiating, influencing, those are things that can be learned and we think of listening as something that people are innately good at or not, and so we might write it off a little bit if we’re not one of those people who is just magically good at it, but it really can be learned. It’s a skill just like any other. And that’s, ultimately, what the book is trying to do, is to really explicitly lay out what are some of those techniques so that you can begin to take them up and practice them in your everyday.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes, so a quote that I love is “Never judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his shoes.” And that’s from a book called Walk Two Moons. And it’s really about empathy. It’s about not judging someone, and understanding that people have rich lives beyond what we know, and making space for that to be the case, which I find helpful in general, but especially when you’re…the day someone cuts you off while you’re driving, or if someone is slightly rude to you in a meeting, it’s like, “Okay, something else is going on. It’s probably not about me.”

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I find myself often returning to Sherry Turkle’s work. So, she is the author of Reclaiming Conversation and several other books. She looks at the intersection of society and technology, and she’s done a lot of research on how devices are changing our conversations in person, things like how even having a cellphone on the table, even if it’s face down, decreases our ability to empathize with the other person in conversation. So, I find her work to be very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Ximena Vengoechea
A favorite book, I mean, I do return to Reclaiming Conversation quite a bit so it’s certainly top of mind. And another book that I just finished, which is a totally different topic, is called Big Friendship, and it looks at maybe underrated relationship in our lives that doesn’t get much attention, but it talks about relationships, specifically in the context of friendship and how we treat those versus other relationships in our lives.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I really love analog tools, so my favorite being Post-Its and Sharpies. I find that I’m far less precious with my thoughts and that I don’t get overly attached to ideas. If I start something where I’m just in a deck and I’m immediately trying to work on a presentation that way, things look better than they are if you just write them on a sticky note. You kind of know that that’s the rough draft and I find it easier to rework ideas that way.

Pete Mockaitis
So, when you say precious, it means you’re more attached to it the more it’s all digitally dressed up and beautified. It feels like, “This is something that I cannot throw away or dramatically rework because of attractiveness.”

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. And I think you also tend to rework in minor ways, so you’d be like, “Oh, something is off with the sentence. Let me move the comma or fiddle with this thing.” And it’s like, “Well, something might be off with the idea.” So, Post-Its allow you to work at the level of the idea and then, once you’ve gotten beyond that, then, sure, go and refine and prettify your deck and do all that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. And I also find that when I’m in the constraint of a slide, it’s sort of like, “Well, this is the point I’m making, and this is the cool chart that I have, so I only have this box to do the thing.” It’s like, “Well, maybe it doesn’t need to be confined in that box in the first place.” And so, the format kind of pre-ordained or influenced the content prematurely. Well, I’m going to chew on that. Thank you.

Ximena Vengoechea
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Ximena Vengoechea
A favorite habit, taking breaks in terms of taking walks. Like, if I’m stuck on a challenging topic or can’t break through, I have learned to step away from the screen and just take a walk. I think our brains will often noodle things, on things, on our behalf when we’re not paying attention.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I think the default listening modes really resonates with people because they can easily identify a mode, and whenever you have a type, you feel like, “Okay, I get this now.” And then the other one, I would say, is the role of silence in conversations is something that’s come up a lot where I talk about waiting 10 seconds, waiting a little bit longer than is comfortable in order to give the other person space. And that seems to be resonating with people because it’s hard and it goes counter to what we usually think about silence in conversations.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
Best place to get in touch is on my website, so that’s XimenaVengoechea.com, and that’s kind of the hub for all of the offshoots, social media, and newsletter, book, all that good stuff.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, I would say do your best to uncover what that hidden need is in conversation, especially in professional settings. The person’s job, function, whether they’re in marketing or sales or design, is a really good starting clue to uncovering that need.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ximena, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you many great conversations.

Ximena Vengoechea
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

685: How to Manage Conflict and Work Peacefully in Virtual Teams with John Riordan

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John Riordan shares practical strategies for overcoming the unique challenges of conflict among virtual teams.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three best practices for preventing conflict 
  2. How to face conflict head on with the SBID model
  3. The three options you have when working with a jerk 

 

About John

For over 30 years, John Riordan has been committed to challenging people and organizations to reach their full capacity – first as a leadership program founder and director in East Africa, and now as an organization and leadership development consultant. He has consulted with a broad range of federal, private sector and non-profit organizations conducting hundreds of planning, team building and training workshops ranging from large conferences (200+) to small intact teams. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, sponsors!

John Riordan Interview Transcript

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

John Riordan
Absolutely. My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom but, first, I want to hear about the Marine Corps marathon that you did. How is that different than a normal marathon and what’s the backstory there?

John Riordan
Well, yeah, so that’s a good question and the backstory is interesting too. So, first of all, I’ll say a former friend, I don’t like this guy anymore. I went out for a jog one day and I’ve never ran more than three miles in my life, and he says, “Have you ever thought about running a marathon?” I laughed out loud, like, “Are you kidding me? Five miles would be a stretch and I have no interest in running a marathon whatsoever.”

He says, “Why not?” “Well, I couldn’t think of a thousand reasons why not. I don’t want to get injured as well.” “You don’t have to get injured. If something hurts, you stop.” I’m like, “Okay. It’s boring. Running for hours is boring.” “Well, could you do something about that?” Well, long story short, you could listen to things and learn things, and you’d be amazed how much you can learn while you’re running for two or three hours at a time.

Long story short, he coached me simply by saying, by asking the ultimate coaching question is, “What could you do about that?” And, ultimately, he’s sort of helped me dismantle all my own defenses to the point where I kind of had to do it. And so, I like to say I completed the Marine Corps, meaning I walked-run, not run the whole way. I had all this mental models. I thought everyone who ran any marathon would be super athlete fit runner. Nope, not the case whatsoever.

You look at any marathon, but the Marine Corps especially, I mean any size, shape that you would be shocked at who is capable of completing a marathon. I thought you had to die at the end, because as the first marathoner, I thought that was the requirement. You had to run with all your strength and then collapse and die. Nope. Apparently, that is not a requirement so I couldn’t stick to that one.

And so, just dismantling all these barriers that I had in my mind, some of which were simply like, I guess you’d say excuses, but many of which were just misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or assumptions I was making. And it was such a powerful metaphor for my own experience because I do this kind of coaching with folks all the time, and so to experience it for myself and realize how many assumptions I’m making, how many misunderstandings, how many barriers, artificial barriers I’ve put in my way. And when you remove those, it’s like, “Oh, shoot. Now I guess I have to do it because I have no more excuses.”

And the Marine Corps is, they call it America’s Marathon. It’s the beginner’s marathon. It’s a very flat course. They promote first-time marathoners so you get kind of bumped up if it’s your first one. And there’s thousands of people cheering you the entire way, and so it’s just a high the whole way that you’re being cheered on and encouraged and all that stuff, and so it’s a great experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, yeah, there’s lessons right there and metaphors and excuses.

John Riordan
Well, I tell you, so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, “What could you do about that?” is a fine question.

John Riordan
Yeah, it’s a great question.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, so you’ve got a boatload of experience when it comes to leadership development and you’ve got many courses. And we had several conversations with folks about virtual teams and virtual leadership and virtual meetings and overcoming distractions when you’re working from home, etc. What intrigued me about you is you’ve specifically got courses on dealing with conflict in virtual environments and facilitating in virtual environments.

And I think those are probably two of the toughest things to do with folks who are in different places. So, let’s dig in and talk about conflict resolution stuff in a virtual context. And, maybe, could you kick us off with a juicy story? Like, what’s a good, good, meaty, reality TV-grade drama or conflict that you’ve seen or heard about from your clients resolved through virtual media?

John Riordan
Yeah. Right. So, as I say, conflict is typically challenging for most of us regardless even when we are in person, and it’s uncomfortable and awkward and all that other sort of stuff.

Well, you layer on the virtual context and it just changes the parameters, and there are some upsides. There are some upsides to the virtual context. We might not annoy each other as much, my personality might not grate on you because we’re not across the hallway from each other, whatever. But clearly, the downside is, the big challenge is, that the little misunderstanding in that email goes unaddressed and we have to be intentional, very intentional, about bringing it up because, otherwise, when we’re in person, we’ll bumped into each other in the hallway, I’ll see you as we walk, we’re walking out, I’ll see at lunch, whatever, at the next meeting, “Hey, Pete, about that thing, about that project, about that whatever…” and we have these, otherwise, even unnoticed interactions.

The volume of interaction that happens in person, that is in the Ethisphere, really, it has been very interesting to watch the literature emerging in the past 18 months because, prior to COVID, you had intentionally virtual organizations, people who chose to work virtually, their organization wanted them to work virtually, their job was structured for virtual work. Well, the past 18 months, for most of us, has been suddenly virtual without choice, without option, without structure, and, basically, chaos.

And so, all that Ethisphere interaction just vaporized and, all of a sudden, you and I are exchanging emails, we have that misunderstanding, but we don’t see each other, at best on a video conference, if that, once a week, and so I’m not going to setup a meeting to address this minor thing with you, and so it grows, and so that distance grows. And pretty soon, you start to have the wedge that develops.

So, turn to the juicy stories, geez, I don’t even know where to begin. The one that pops to mind is we’re sitting there on a meeting convened by a full-bird colonel, and one of the participants is on video, and he’s clearly distracted. And as the colonel is presenting, this guy is talking to other people, he’s looking all over, he’s like obviously not paying attention. Well, this doesn’t go over well with the colonel who finally stops and says, “Hey,” I’ll call him Joe, “Joe,” awkward sound, “Joe.” This guy is talking, he doesn’t even hear himself, he’s probably muted the whole thing.

I mean, it’s a good couple of minutes before Joe finally looks down and awkward, and, “Oh, I’m sorry…” And he’s like, “So, are you with us, Joe?” “Oh, oh, sorry, sorry.” Well, there’s too many people on the call, the colonel is not going to address Joe right there and then, which is good. So, what’s the colonel going to do? Is he going to make an appointment with Joe? Is he going to setup another call to have this discussion, what happened? I mean, this whole thing was like it just snowballs. The whole team is involved because everybody watched it.

If you were in a conference room and someone was distracted and that happened, it would essentially get resolved real-time, probably, optimistically, just by virtue of the interaction. In the virtual world, that meeting is over. Boop! Everyone disappears. So, we all witnessed it and then it’s over. There’s no hallway discussion, there’s no post-chat discussion, and so you have this awkward thing. And the only way to resolve it is reconvene and have a discussion, both the colonel and the individual, and then bringing it back to the group.

I mean, the processing of that conflict in the virtual context too so much more effort than it would have real-time, optimistically. Real-time, you just interact, resolve, address, move on. And so, in the virtual world, it is challenging to be intentional, to lean into it, for those of us who it’s not a natural strength. There’s a few people where conflict they’re just good at it, and then there’s the rest of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, we have to know how things conclude. So, what happened with the colonel and Joe here today?

John Riordan
Well, let’s just say Joe kind of wrapped it up with this, which is, in his mind, his perspective was that this was urgent, this was…I don’t know if he used the word crisis but, in his mind, this was urgent and he needed to address it right away. Well, I don’t know how familiar you are with the military, but with a full-birded colonel, like you could pretty much use rank, unless it’s a general, you pay attention to the colonel first or you interrupt to say, “I’m sorry, sir. The building is on fire. I’m going to have to step away for a few…” and so, his lack of awareness of the protocol and how to handle his situation on his end.

Now, the colonel is very reasonably gracious but it definitely clarified that this guy, and so he was two steps down from the colonel, he’s a civilian so he reports to his boss, his boss reports to the colonel. Well, let’s just say it was clear he has a lot to learn, so now he’s kind of – what’s the right word – not demoted positionally but he didn’t show up well. He showed up really badly so now he’s going to have to overcome that. It’s going to take time for him to demonstrate that he has learned and sort of overcome that experience with folks.

And, again, in the virtual world, he only has very limited opportunities to do that. In person, you’d have more meetings, you’d have more interactions, you’d have the hallway. Now, he’s like he has to lean into it and really reestablish his reputation in a lot of ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

John Riordan
So, he’s still there, as far I know. It wasn’t that bad but it was not good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that does kind of paint a picture in terms of things that can occur and the extra challenges that ensue. So, lay it on us, what are some of the best practices you’ve discovered when it comes to managing conflict when folks are remote?

John Riordan
First and foremost, intentionality. Paying attention. It’s so much easier when we’re virtual to just dismiss it and let it go and it’s no big deal, and it might not be a big deal. It’s just that clumsy email, or maybe they didn’t really mean it, or maybe I’m misinterpreting what Pete said in his text, and just let it go. Okay. But, however, it’s so tempting to do that because when we switch off the call, I’m back in my own world and I’m not going to see you in the hallway, I’m not going to bump into you in the coffee break, and so it’s easier to just dismiss it.

So, paying attention, intentionality, “Is this worth addressing? Should I address it?” And even before that, I like to say, “What’s my bias with regard to conflict in the first place?” I am conflict-avoidant, so I know that my bias is to let it go. And, therefore, given that bias, I may need to lean into this and step into this more than I feel comfortable with. That’s probably true.

There are some people in the world who are conflict-seeking who don’t mind. My father-in law was this way. He loved a good knockdown drill. Like, to him, everything was an opportunity for a very energetic debate. Anyone else would’ve said, “Gosh, why are you arguing?” And he’d tell them, “I’m not arguing. We’re just having a healthy debate.” So, he didn’t mind and he would lean into everything. Most of us, percentage-wise, I think most people are on that conflict-reluctant.

And so, how to assess yourself with regard to your style around conflict, and then in the virtual realm being attentive and intentional, being more open to it. And then third, I’d say, is talk about it. Talk about it. Like, for goodness’ sake, bring this up as a team with your colleagues, “So, Pete, you and I are going to work together for the next 12 months. Hey, can we talk about some operating agreements? How are we going to handle differences of opinion? How are we going to handle conflict? How are we going to handle our working practices? What’s our communication style? What can we do to help each other and find a good way through the middle?”

And so, having a conversation about how we will handle conflict, before we’re in the middle of a big conflict, is so, so critical for teams. It’s so helpful to get it out on the table so it’s not some awkward taboo subject that nobody wants to broach.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s just so huge when it comes to aligning expectations in many contexts in terms of, one, upfront we kind of know, hey, what we’re dealing with and what the standards are. And, two, it just sort of prevents a lot of that stuff. It’s like someone is mad because someone else has not fulfilled their unspoken expectations, and it’s like, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize I broke a rule that was never mentioned as being a rule. Oops!” So, that’s just a great practice to do in many contexts.

And so, when it comes to, “How are we going to address conflict?” have you seen any particular best practices that have been in a lot of operating agreements and been really helpful for folks?

John Riordan
Yeah. Well, that would be the first one, is to establish a set of operating agreements. Now, I would offer, prior to that, a really good practice is to do that, have that conversation and do an assessment. I don’t necessarily mean formally, just as a team, just discuss, “Pete, what’s your style? Are you more conflict-avoidant or are you more conflict-seeking, somewhere in the middle? Help me understand your style. I’ll explain to you that I do tend to be conflict-avoidant. I get uncomfortable but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. It’s just I get all sort of uneasy, so bear with me to the extent that you can encourage me and keep me going in the conflict. That’ll be helpful to me. So, let’s have that discussion. Where are we as a team?”

And there are some really simple models that will help folks have a conversation. There’s from Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He has this conflict continuum, and one end is artificial harmony where we’re all avoiding it, “Oh, it’s great. Everything is great. Yup, we’re all good. Yeah, no, no, no, there’s no problem here.” “Like, really? Because it sure sounded like there was.” So, artificial harmony on one end.

And on the other is destructive conflicts, mean-spirited attacks and backbiting and all that sort of stuff. And so, the ideal is healthy and constructive conflict is somewhere in that middle ground where we’re able to have the hard conversations and we’re open to that. So, assessing, with a small A, you don’t have to take a big instrument or anything, just, “Where do you think we are? And let’s talk about it. And what would it look like for us to maintain a healthy and constructive conflict culture?” And then that can lead you into, “Okay, so how do we do that?”

And I would say that that becomes a matter of operating agreements where we can talk about it, like, “What does that look like?” “Well, we should respect each other.” “Okay, what does that really mean? What does that really look like for you?” “Well, it means we don’t interrupt each other.” “Well, I’m a strong extrovert. I don’t care about interruptions, but if you do then I’ll try to pay attention to that. If I interrupt you, don’t take it personally. I’m not trying to dismiss your point. I’m very extroverted.” “Okay, good.” We can learn about each other, come to some agreements, and then try to put them into practice.

And so, when it comes to what those agreements are, I would say there are clearly some general ones, like respect, taking responsibility, addressing things early, not letting it fester, criticism in private, constructive critique in private, affirmation in public, those types of pretty general stuff. And then you get into specifics for a given team based on their situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And so then, let’s say we’re in the thick of things and someone did something that maybe we didn’t have the good fortune to have listened to you earlier and then, thusly, those operating agreements were not formally established. Someone did something. I am miffed. What do you recommend are some of the best ways to go about cleaning that up and addressing the matter? Any go-to scripts, words, phrases, principles?

John Riordan
So, there’s a feedback model that is a nice…I like that word script. I like the model of a recipe. So, I use this metaphor a lot. You have a recipe, how to make something, once you’ve done it a number of times, you can play with it. You don’t have to follow the recipe exactly and you can add something or try something different and see how it goes. But the basic recipe, at least, is a guide.

And so, this model is from the Center for Creative Leadership, SBID – situation, behavior, impact, desired outcome, SBID. And so, what’s the situation? So, I don’t call you and leave a voicemail, and say, “Pete, we need to talk. I’m just not happy with how you attacked me at the meeting the other day.” “Whoa, what on earth?” That’s like you’re already going to be on the defensive. You don’t even know where I’m coming from.

So, give a little context to this. What’s the situation? “So, Pete, we’re in that meeting, we’re on that call, we’re having that discussion. Do you remember that? And I was presenting, do you remember? Do you remember how you asked that question to me? I don’t know if you knew. So, that situation.” “Okay, yeah, I’m with you. We’ve got it. I understand the context.”

Now, the behavior, the B, that’s critical because it’s not an accusation. It’s simply a statement of behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re a jerk.” Not that.

John Riordan
Exactly, “Pete, you keep criticizing me in public. You keep dismantling my argument.” “What? I’m not trying to…I don’t even know what you’re…I’m not dismantling you.” “Well, you asked that question.” “Ah, yeah. That’s all I did was ask a question.” “Well, you’re trying to undermine me.” “Whoa, I’m not trying to undermine you. I just had a question about your data. Like, really, I’m not…”

Okay, impact. The impact was, “It felt to me that you were trying to undermine my credibility. It felt like you were questioning my presentation, questioning my data.” “I was asking a question about your data I wasn’t trying to embarrass you in public.” So, that impact helps you understand how your behavior impacted me, but it also is important for me to own that, assuming good intent, unless I have enough record to believe that you actually are out to get me.

And the other possibility is that you didn’t do it intentionally but this is how it impacted me, and can we have a conversation about that. And that is a huge, huge – what would you call that – a sea change, a really big distinction. And here’s the question you can write down, “Did you do this on purpose?” Did the person, whoever they are, did they do this to you intentionally? Did they do it to you on purpose?

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is that a question you ask yourself internally or a question you ask of the other party?

John Riordan
Well, kind of both ends. That’s a good point. It starts with me asking it of myself. So, my example is somebody cuts me off in traffic, “Aargh, can you believe that? What an idiot.” And then my wife says, “Well, maybe their wife is having a baby. Maybe their house is on fire. Maybe they have all kinds of reasons.” Well, the person didn’t roll down the window and say, “Hey, are you John Riordan?” “Yes.” “Oh, okay, I’m going to cut you off because I can’t stand you and I want to ruin your day.” That’s not what they’re thinking. They are just being self-centered, they’re just going about their day, they’re not paying attention to me, and they cut me off. It doesn’t mean it’s okay but it wasn’t about me. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Right, yeah.

John Riordan
You’re asking a question in the middle of a presentation, your mindset might be, “I don’t really like those numbers. I wonder where he got those.” There’s all kinds of reasons why you might be asking that question other than, “Watch this. I’m going to ask this question and dismantle John’s argument. It’s going to be great. He’s going to fall apart,” because that would be intentional and then we’re adversaries.

But there’s a lot of other possibilities as to why people do what they do. And so, having that discussion, disarming – I love that metaphor – disarming the conflict so that it becomes instead of a capital C, we’re having a full-blown argument, it’s a small C, “Can we talk about this?” “Well, I didn’t like your numbers.” “Well, I appreciate that and, of course, you have the right to ask about my numbers. I would ask you to respect the fact that this is a presentation in front of senior managers, and could you have followed up with me later, or I ask you to review the material ahead of time. I don’t know if you did, but I would’ve appreciated you asking me that question before the meeting, etc.” So, there’s all kinds of ways we might address it to resolve the distinction without it getting to a capital C, conflict.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, as I step into this scenario that you’ve created, John, I just sort of wonder, like, what do you do when the other party…? I won’t say that they’re like malicious evil jerks trying to get you, but they just think your concern is dumb, they’re like, “Look, John, this is a data-driven organization. We try to make the best decisions. If I’ve got a question about your data, I’m going to ask the question about your data, I don’t care where we are, who you’re talking to. It’s just how we get to the truth and optimal business results. So, pull up your big boy pants and get a thick skin and stop whining to me about this inane bull crap so we can go make insane value for shareholders.”

Let’s say you get a pretty rude but not like maliciously, “That’s right, buddy. I’m out to take you down, so watch your back.” So, a pretty brute and dismissive response. How do you think about those?

John Riordan
Yeah. So, let me emphasize the distinction that you just made because, again, one is, “I have reason to believe that this person is an active adversary. They are literally out to take me down.” And those do exist. I’m not talking about being naïve and pretending that everybody is your best friend. There are a few, and hopefully a few, adversaries that you should watch out for. If you have a lot of adversaries, then you got to decide whether you can sustain that lifestyle and that career, and some people can, but for many of us, that might be a signal for a job change. If I’m surrounded by people who want to take me out, you either sign up for that or you don’t. So, that’s the first distinction.

The second, the way you’re describing it, is, “Look, it’s not about you, John. I really don’t care. I’m going to keep asking those questions. You just have to get over it.” So, they’re not out to take me down but they’re not also going to handle me with kid gloves. Then it becomes a question of power – power and influence in the organization. Because if that voice is coming from a full-bird colonel, and I’m the low person on the totem pole, then, guess what, I have to either live with that and go about my business, or I have to decide I’m in the wrong organization.

If that person is a peer, and we’re on equal footing, so to speak, then that’s a whole different scenario, “What influence do I have? Do I continue the discussion? Do I counter with, ‘Hey, I’d just be down. I think that’s a great way for us to work, because if I did that to you, you wouldn’t be happy. Can we not find a better way of working together?’” That’s the D in the SBID, the desired outcome is, “Can we learn to work together well?”

Now, option three, if that voice was coming from a subordinate, somebody who reports to me, I’d say, “Okay, have a seat. We need to talk. You need to decide whether you want to stay here or not because this is not how we’re going to operate in my sphere of influence.” So, it depends on who that individual is and what power and authority relationship we have.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s handy. Thank you. Well, tell me, John, any other key things you want to make sure to mention about conflict resolution and in virtual settings, maybe any sort of tools or favorite apps, software, or things that you find handy?

John Riordan
That’s interesting. For me, the resources, they’re now showing up online. Apps-wise, it doesn’t come to mind but in terms of models. So, one is by an author named Peter Block. And Peter Block’s partnership model lays out this distinction between trust and agreement. And so, you ask yourself, “Okay,” and I go through this exercise, a great exercise for everybody. You’re mapping out, especially in the work context, but of course it bleeds over to the rest of our lives as well. How much trust is there in the relationship? And how much agreement, in terms of the content of the discussion?

So, we disagree about the numbers and the data, but I don’t distrust you. I trust that you’re just asking a question about the numbers. That’s okay. Versus, if there’s no trust, then we have a serious problem. Trust is obviously far more critical than agreement. If I trust you, we can disagree about anything but I still trust you. We trust each other. And that distinction is huge.

So, Peter Block has a great article. I’ve got summary worksheets on this on my website but it’s the kind of thing that really helps you lay out, “Okay, who are my allies that I trust, we agree, we’re working in the same direction. I can really rely on these folks. There’s other categories and there are some unknowns, and then there’s this adversaries. We disagree on the direction and, guess what, we don’t trust each other so watch out.” Okay, let’s not be naïve. Let’s map this out. So, that’s a really helpful, sort of getting the lay of the land.

Let’s see, Patrick Lencioni’s material around conflict is fantastic. That’s all available on his site. Good stuff.

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

John Riordan
First and foremost, in practical terms, from two authors, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. And there’s a lot of different ways to say this but the bumper sticker for their material is, “Be yourself with more skill.” Be yourself with more skill. And I tell you, if I gave them a nickel for every time I’ve shared that thought, I owe them.

And what I love about that is five words. It’s amazing, five words. But, boy, you talk about a life journey, and this applies so powerfully to the work, in your career, and what I’d like to say your calling, but it also applies equally to your personal relationships, family, friends, community, you name it. Be yourself, be who you are made to be, figure out who you are, bring yourself to the table, your values, your strengths, your personality, but do it with more skill.

I spent years trying to be something else, be more of this, be less of that, as opposed to, “Okay, who am I? And then how do I show up skillfully? How do I bring my strengths to bear in a skillful way?” If that makes sense, it’s such an interesting but very powerful nuance.

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

John Riordan
I really appreciate the stuff that they did around this piece around authentic leadership, so Goffee and Jones. And, essentially, one of those harbingers, there’s been plenty of research around this, but the culture of leadership, and the shift from command and control. So, my dad was a marine, World War II, Korean War marine, and let me tell you, you did what the boss told you to do – command and control. “Why should I do what you tell me?” “Because I’m your boss. Because I’m above you. I outrank you. You name it. You do what you’re told.”

Well, clearly, we take it for granted, but leadership culture has evolved tremendously. Their article was called “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” It kind of flips it on its head.

And so, leadership now is about respect and response, and people choosing to follow you, choosing to allow you to influence them. And that’s what leadership is about now and it’s really evolved tremendously. And so, that piece of research, that kind of encapsulated that and demonstrated that, amongst men, but, to me, it’s a real – what would you call that – a milestone, a marker, that we have really shifted as a culture.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite book?

John Riordan
Currently, the one that is making the biggest difference in my life is called The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.

She calls them tendencies, these ideas of, “How I operate? What makes me tick? What moves me from ideas into action? And how different that can be for different people?” And that has been super insightful for me and in sharing that with clients and helping people understand and, of course, it overlaps with personalities and all those other things, but, essentially, focusing in on moving from thought into action.

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

John Riordan
Yeah, I would repeat that one, The Four Tendencies. So, for me on that, the huge lightbulb for me is that I am motivated by external factors, and I spent years trying to be more self-disciplined, trying to develop kind of just put my nose to the grindstone and get it done. Not bad to have self-discipline. That’s great. But she distinguishes that some people are internally motivated, and they will, when they decide to do something, they’ll go do it.

Other people are externally motivated. So, I can have a great idea, and something I’d even like to do, but if nobody else is involved, if I’m not accountable to anybody, if I don’t have to answer to anyone, if no one else is there, then the likelihood I’ll be doing it is much lower. As soon as somebody else is involved, I’ll do it.

So, I’ve harnessed that, I got myself an executive assistant who is my professional bulldog, and I say, “Jorie, make sure this happens.” I’m on this podcast because of her. I love doing these things but I’m not going to do it. She says, “You’re going to do it. Make sure it happens,” and then I do it.

And so, harnessing that tendency, for me, of external motivation, I mean, I can’t even tell you everything I’ve been able to accomplish simply because it’s gone from ideas, the long list of good ideas in my head, and actually turning them into action.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

John Riordan
I would say two. Exercising has been huge.
I can’t say enough about it just in terms of de-stress, in terms of getting all that energy out in the negative sense, and then coming back and being ready to go. But, also, what I love about going to the gym, one of the big upsides, is little incremental small victories. So, I keep track of my workouts. I’m only there for half an hour, 40 minutes tops, but I try to just keep incrementally improving.

And it’s very cool to start the day by adding a few more reps, or adding a few more pounds, or adding a few more whatever to that weight or to that exercise, and to feel like, “Okay. All right. This is something I can win at.” And so, now I can go back into the day and bring that same sense of energy and motivation into the rest of what I got to do. So, that’s number one.

And then number two, what I listen to. I can’t say enough. The same thing, through the 18 months, like God bless you if you grew up with lots of positive encouragement and I had a very affirming upbringing. But my dad worked for IBM, very neutral, not an entrepreneur, just went to work and came home, so I never had somebody, a voice in my ears saying, “Hey, you got this. You can do it. Get in there. You’re great at this. You can…” whatever, all that sort of coaching and positive affirmations. And so, it’s been huge to tap into just little YouTube clips, different motivational stuff that suits my style, and to really have that voice in my ear, literally, cheering me on, coaching me on. It’s been fantastic. Very, very much a game changer, especially over this stressful time.

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

John Riordan
Oh, that first one, “Be yourself with more skill.” That’s number one, absolutely.

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

John Riordan
JR@JohnRiordan.com is the email address and JohnRiordan.com is the website.

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

John Riordan
That journey of self-discovery is absolutely, I can’t say enough about what a starting point that is. And it’s a journey, it’s not like you take two weeks off and learn about yourself, and then that’s it. But to delve into that, “What are your core values?” and contemplate on that. Really define it, writing it down. Everybody, almost any American is going to say, “Oh, I have core values.” “Okay, what are they?” “Ahh, I don’t really know.”

So, what are your core values? Write them down. Think about them. Define them. There’s different ways to go about that. What are your strengths that you bring to the world, to your work, to your family, to your…What are those? Do you know what they are or you just kind of know? And what’s your personality traits? What makes you tick? What motivates you? And sort of capturing that, collecting that awareness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, John, this has been a treat. Thank you for sharing the goods. And keep on rocking.

John Riordan
Thank you. My pleasure. My pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity. I hope this is encouraging and challenging and useful for folks.

678: How to Win Trust and Connect Masterfully with Riaz Meghji

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Riaz Meghji says: "There's two teachers in the room in any conversation."

Riaz Meghji reveals the key behaviors that lead to more meaningful connections.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The one trick to becoming a better listener 
  2. Where to draw the line between vulnerability and oversharing 
  3. How to be assertively empathetic 

About Riaz

Riaz Meghji is a Human Connection Expert. He has 17 years of broadcast television experience, and, during his time as host on Citytv’s Breakfast Television, MTV Canada, TEDxVancouver, CTV News, and the Toronto International Film Festival, has interviewed thousands of experts about human connection and collaboration, undertaking critical training that helped shape the tangible takeaways he shares in his new book, Every Conversation Counts 

Resources mentioned in the show:

 

Thank you, sponsors!

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Riaz Meghji Interview Transcript

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

Riaz Meghji
Pete, it is good to be with you, man. Thanks for having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to talk. And I also want to hear, you’ve got a story, you’ve got some Canadian TV background, and another Canadian star, Eugene Levy. I understand there’s a story involving you, him, and eyebrows. Tell us about it.

Riaz Meghji
I love it. This is what happens when you fill out the questionnaire beforehand, “Tell me some tidbits of where we can go.” Eugene Levy, a national treasure here in Canada, and he was filming a cameo role on a sitcom called Package Deal which was being filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I am right now, and we had a chance to go on set with Eugene, and, obviously, a legend in the comedy game. He’s honed his craft, you could tell the entire cast and crew respected him, we had 20 minutes to do an interview, and he was so generous, so gracious about how he’s achieved success, how his family succeeds. A lot of people know about Dan Levy in Schitt’s Creek.

And then, towards the end of the interview, he just took a moment to pause and say, “Hey, thank you very much for bringing the energy, the enthusiasm to the interview, but if there’s one piece of advice I can give you, if you want to succeed in this business, and if you want to play the long game, there’s one thing you need to know.” Obviously, when Eugene drops that, I just leaned in, I’m like, “What is it?” He’s like, “Make sure you insure your eyebrows.” I’m like, “What?”

I know we’re on the podcast right now but, hey, game recognizes game. He’s got those thick caterpillars, these south Asian roots are giving me those thick caterpillars too, and I said, “Eugene, awesome, man. I don’t know if they do that, but that is an amazing trademark to make it in the entertainment business. Game on.”

Pete Mockaitis
Insure the eyebrows, yeah. It’s hard enough to get an insurance company to do anything outside of their cookie-cutter legal boilerplate. That’d probably take some doing to pull that off.

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, they would put a new box to check, “Diva, yup. Correct. That’s Riaz. He wants his eyebrows insured. Let’s just focus on the mortgage and the home.”

Pete Mockaitis
There’s an extra premium for the diva. It’s like a young driver, they’ll slap you with that. So, we’re talking about you got a book here, Every Conversation Counts: The 5 Habits of Human Connection that Build Extraordinary Relationships. I’d love to hear you’ve done a lot of conversing and connecting in your years. What would you say is one of the most surprising lessons you’ve picked up along the way?

Riaz Meghji
That there’s two teachers in the room in any conversation. Two teachers in the room, and this was a great lesson that was presented to me by a very popular host in Canada. His name is Ron MacLean, a magnificent storyteller, and he has this gift of anybody he interviews, his primary gig is Hockey Night in Canada, but he is such a masterful interviewer with athletes, not just seeing what’s in front of us, but seeing what the story is behind the lens. And he really talked about the idea that the interviewers out there that can do their research and come in with the greatest intention, get asked their job to just stay as curious as long as possible.

But how somebody really listens, how an interviewer really listens to draw out the story that isn’t being told is the opportunity to be a teacher, because the person answering the questions, they’ve got the ideas, they’ve got the stories they’re going to share, but the art of listening and being the interviewer, you can be a powerful teacher to just be a mirror and create a heightened level of awareness that that subject might not even know about.

And when he said that to me, that there’s two teachers in the room, it always reminded me, whether you’re asking the question or answering the question, there’s a chance to learn from each other in just very profound ways.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Certainly. And listening is huge and I think a lot of my guests have commented, “It’s nice that you don’t just sort of move through a pre-set list of questions.” I mean, where’s the fun in that? In terms of the live back and forth is where a lot of the magic and fun is, so amen to that.

Riaz Meghji
You know, it’s so true. And I can say this, early on in my career, I’ve been doing television for almost 20 years now. Earlier on, I would do that exact same thing, Pete. I’d do all of the research, come up with a list of questions that I thought were brilliant, and then I would check the box of, “Was this a successful interview?” And the gauge on that would be, “Did I ask all of the questions I brought in to the conversation?” And then, slowly, I was realizing the moment was being missed to unlock something from that subject that you can’t Google. And one of the simple things I would do in the green room with any guest, no matter how much research I would do, which would give me confidence, I would slowly begin to over-prepare to improvise.

And the way I would do it is in that green room. I would greet the guests, we’d go past the formalities, but I’d simply start that by asking, “Hey, so what’s on your mind?” And the first thing that came out of their mouth would allow me to understand what the priority is for them. So, no matter how much research I did, I would park it, prioritize their priorities, and then lean in and listen and be ready to improvise. And I found that’s where some magical moments would really happen with the people in front of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool because, I’d imagine, if that’s their priority, and you give some love and attention up front, they’d think, “I like this Riaz guy. I can open up. I can trust. I can share a little bit more. I can not be as guarded,” and good things can flow there.

Riaz Meghji
Yeah. And that approach allowed me to really understand that there are three questions that stood out when you’re trying to unlock somebody and get them to open up and just truly share who they are. That the three questions we all ask ourselves, especially the first time we’re meeting somebody are, “Do you care about me? Are you listening to me? And can I trust you?” And simply recognizing the value of those three questions really allowed some beautiful moments to be shared not only in the green room but that trust to convey something really powerful when it was on live TV which can be nerve-racking for anybody involved.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are some great questions right there. And, I’m curious, I guess you’ll get the answers you want if you actually do care, you actually are listening, and you actually are trustworthy, so I don’t know if there’s any tricks or hacks that can be implemented there but, nonetheless, I’m going to ask you. How do you make it so that the person you’re talking to picks up the good stuff, assuming that you do have a good heart and intentions, and you really do care, and you really are listening, and you really are trustworthy? How can you make that all the more apparent?

Riaz Meghji
I think it’s saying less and listening more and following their lead. And what I found is, over the years, a lot of the times when you look at any conversation or any interview, the person who controls the conversation is the one asking the questions. And sometimes that initial question that you ask, I would get caught up in the trap early on, Pete, where I would come in with, like I said, all of this information, and I would overcomplicate things, and I would unleash this overcomplicated set of I have like multiple questions in that first question where somebody is saying, “Okay. Well, hey, that’s great, all this research. I don’t even know how to answer this because you asked me like 10 questions in one.”

So, I think really getting to the point and simplifying things off the top, and then how you make it apparent to that person that you’re dialed in, is the value of the follow up, and those expansive questions that are starting with the what or how that have a high emotional component as well. Because I find a lot of the questions that happen, and maybe it’s because people are overwhelmed with, one, information; two, with stress; three, with the awkwardness, especially coming out of this pandemic of “How do we connect? This has got to be perfect,” is forgetting about the facts and putting the facts in the background and focusing on the emotional connection you can have with somebody.

And I find that’s, that feeling, someone could have where you’re asking a question that really taps into a feeling they’re experiencing, that’s where that magic happens where they begin to really appreciate that you want to be where they’re at, and you’re exploring that important space for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, so let’s dig into some of the particulars then. So, you’ve said in your subtitle “The 5 Habits of Human Connection.” So, what are those five and how do we do them well?

Riaz Meghji
Yeah. Well, we kind of touched on the first one being listening, but the habit I really wanted to articulate is listening without distraction. And this culture that we’re in right now is one culture of convenience with technology. We’re flipping the camera and we’re flipping a microphone on, we’re having our meetings, and everything is moving so fast with this convenience, so it is easy. Looking at the science of our brains and how we connect, in many ways, I feel like we’re all just too smart for our own good simply because our brains can absorb 400-500 words per minute. Yet, the average person is speaking in a rate of 125 words per minute.

So, that means, with that extra capacity we have when we’re listening, we can easily get caught up in technology, in multitasking, in daydreaming, the emotional distraction of shutting down if we disagree with somebody. So, I think the first thing, if we’re going to listen without distraction, is listen to ourselves on a daily basis. And if you’re listening to this right now, auditing ourselves to say, “What are the distractions, on a daily basis, in your everyday communication that are pulling away the focus and gift of undivided attention you could give somebody?”

And not trying to remove those all at once because that can be completely overwhelming, but just becoming aware of what they are and then slowly starting to pick those off one by one, and that will allow us to be so much more present not only with our listening ear but, more importantly, with our curiosity to dive deeper with what somebody might be sharing with us, especially if it’s something quite vulnerable or real.

Pete Mockaitis
And that notion about being too smart for our own good and the word count differential, I’m intrigued with the awareness of distractions. Can you give us some big categories because I think it’s pretty obvious? Like, okay, the phone. You can look at your smartphone, you hear the dings and the buzzes, and you’re just, “Who was that? What was that? What’s going on just right there?” So, that’s one, and I think that’s kind of obvious. But what are some of the other ways that we fill that word count gap in between our ears that’s distracting and unhelpful?

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, if we’re feeling uneasy, it’s so easy for us to get caught up in our agendas. If we’re rehearsing our elevator pitch, or think about the interview process, you’re thinking about, “Okay, did I get to this question? Did I get to this question?” we’re missing out on what that person is giving us. So, it really comes down to, “How do we just let go of our agenda?” Let go of that pitch that you had and ask more and try to unlock something with someone.

It’s easy with our own biases to have assumptions unconsciously get in the way of thinking, “This is the way it’s going to go. This is the way it’s always been,” and missing out on an opportunity to have a breakthrough with somebody. And that really ties into the idea of judgment as well and our negativity bias. So, checking our bias, our judgment, our assumption, and even our agendas, on that emotional level, I think that’s one of the biggest, Pete.

I think the first thing people will say, “Oh, it’s technology. It’s our screens getting in the way.” But I also think it’s us. And with all of the mental game that could go on trying to achieve an outcome, we might lose sight on the opportunity of enter every conversation of how we’re going to build this pure and meaningful relationship as opposed to go through all of these mechanical or just methodical ways to achieve your objective, so to speak.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really good with the agenda there in terms of when you’re focused on that, you’re necessarily not focused on what is being said in the moment. And, it’s funny, I think maybe we have a suspicion perhaps that if we don’t give mental energy to remembering the agenda, it will be forgotten and catastrophe will befall us. But, in practice, I find that once there’s a pause, it’s just like, “Oh. And, oh, now this thing.” It doesn’t go away if you stop thinking about it. It’s still ready for you and you could just write it down.

Riaz Meghji
When all else goes, write it down. And you know what, that’s actually a very good point because one of the most important things that I’ve learned that has really helped, I mean, you asked an important point of, “How do you make this apparent in the conversation itself that you care, and that I am listening to you and I trust you?” Those things you write down, especially those uncommon commonalities that might pop up with unique passions, whether it’s maybe something in your career, something in your health, something in your relationships, but something that’s so specific.

If you’re able to write that down, and let’s be real, we’re not going to be able to remember every single detail, but if we write it down and we follow up with somebody a week, a month, maybe even a year down the line, instead of me emailing you and saying, “Hey, Pete, hope you’re well.” But if we can replace “Hope you’re well” with “Hey, Pete,” and then insert a moment we shared, immediately someone is going to say, “Wow! I can’t believe Pete remembered that,” and it’s going to start opening up that idea of, “Yeah, they listened. Yeah, they care. Yeah, I could trust him because he valued what I said.” And that takes effort on our part when we’re listening and also being real with documenting these moments, too, because, realistically, we can only remember so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. All right, so we have the habit of listening without distraction. And the second habit is to make your small talk bigger. How do you recommend we do that?

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, man. A lot of people dread the idea of small talk. I bet you, you just use those two words, small talk, people will think, “I don’t want to go there. I’m just going to dodge it. I’m going to avoid it altogether.” And looking at the exercise of small talk over the years, I’ve just come to realize that small talk is such a defense mechanism because what it really does is it prevents us from the embarrassment of getting emotional in front of someone we don’t know. Or, maybe hitting a nerve with somebody else and we’re not ready to process their emotion and be a witness to what they’re experiencing.

And I think with small talk, if we’re going to make it bigger, especially right now, the big change I feel we’ve all seen in the past year is that, in many ways, we’ve all been in the constant state of grief whether we realize it or not, and it’s grief over the loss of the way we used to live our lives. Like, those conversations of convenience at the watercooler, or dropping into somebody’s office, or maybe hanging out on the sidelines at a sports game with parents as you watched your kids. Those are gone. Temporarily, those are gone. But the conversation that’s top of mind for everybody right now is the psychological struggle of how they’ve waded through and kind of survived through this pandemic.

So, if we’re going to make our small talk bigger, here’s a real opportunity, and maybe this was a silver lining of this uncertainty being our universal commonality with the pandemic, is just, yes, less facts, more emotion. And if you have no context of the person in front of you, like as interviewers, we could say, “Hey, yeah, okay. We had time to research the subject. We have some ideas. It’s going to make this small talk go deeper a lot easier.” But if you have no context of that person in front of you, being a proud Canadian, I call this the happiness hat trick, and this is courtesy of the late great psychiatrist Gordon Livingston, who did terrific work on the happiness equation for people.

And he found the happiest people have something to do, they have someone to love, and they have something to look forward to. And if you have no context of the person in front of you, start there because all of those have a high emotional component of what matters most to the person in front of you, and that will start to unlock that sense of feeling of where somebody is at, and then, yeah, let them lead with that and be that teacher that ask those questions to help unlock where they’re at and where they want to go. And that conversation, that relationship, will deepen in a really meaningful way.

Pete Mockaitis
And that notion of the small talk being a defense mechanism, I think that really rings true though I haven’t quite thought of it that way. If someone says, I just walk in a place and say, “How are you doing?” I don’t think…well, it’s true. I don’t want to say, “Well, I feel really weird and restless because we moved and they have no idea what’s going on with the truck and all my stuff, and I’m just like, ‘Is it lost forever? Should I buy all new stuff?’ It’s very unsettling.”

So, on top of not knowing very many people, and so, I don’t know, I’m sad, I’m anxious, I am unsettled. It’s sort of like, “That’s how I’m really doing,” but I’m not going to say that. It’s just like, “How is it going?” when you walk into a Starbucks. And so, effectively, that is a defense mechanism. It’s like I guess just a nicer way of saying, “None of your business.”

Riaz Meghji
It’s so true. Yeah, our answer when somebody says, “How are you?” and you’re like, “Good. Thanks.” Translation, “It’s none of your business.” But if we could switch that question, because it is second nature, it’s just a greeting, it’s autopilot mode. That’s what that question is. But if we switch it with one word, it could provide permission and that opportunity to let that person know, “Pete, I really want to know how you’re doing.”

And it’s, “Hey, how are you really? Like, how are you really doing?” And that one word allows that person to know, “Oh, this person is really checking in. This isn’t just superficial BS of, ‘How are you? Yeah, let’s go through it. Now I’m going to order what I want from Starbucks.’” But there’s an intention of how we ask the question that can really break that autopilot mode so someone could say, “Oh, this is an authentic opportunity here.”

And by you sharing that and somebody being in that space, at any point on any given day, something powerful could happen, and that could change your life, that could change the listener’s life, and that’s up to us on how we engage with our small talk.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s true in terms of what gets opened up and then where that goes. I was chatting with my barber and he started talking about how the Wim Hof breathing approach has transformed his life, and how he met Wim and did some stuff. All this stuff is like, “Well, okay.” He just mentioned that he’s winding down being a barber, it’s like, “Oh, what are you up to?” and he just got going. It was like, “Well, this is fascinating. I’m going to go. I’ve heard of this guy. I’m going to get the app. Whatever. And so, yeah, and we’ll see how transformational it is.”

Riaz Meghji
You said Wim Hof? Was that it?

Pete Mockaitis
Wim Hof, yeah.

Riaz Meghji
I’ve never heard of that. What am I missing?

Pete Mockaitis
He might be on the show. He’s famous for climbing Mt. Everest in his shorts and setting some world records for ice exposure, and there’s some cool science behind some of his breathing and stuff. So, yeah. Anyway, I learned about that in chatting with my barber.

Riaz Meghji
Well done.

Pete Mockaitis
You never know what’ll pop up. Cool. So, let’s hear the third habit there – put aside your perfect persona. What’s the story here?

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, this notion of us practicing imperfection through technology. We see it on social media. It’s kind of become a second nature habit. And the idea here is to really invite people to show up and have the courage to be themselves. And this is easier said than done. It’s an idea that came to me in a conversation with Darren Hardy, which happened a few years back. And, Darren, for those that don’t know, he’s the author of a terrific book, it’s one of my favorites, it’s called The Compound Effect, of how the small things can have a profound effect in your life.

And he’s a renowned CEO, coach, and mentor for leaders around the world, and he was in Vancouver for an event. We sat down for 20 minutes, and he’s interviewed some of the greats as well, like some of the greatest interviewers. And I said to him, I’m like, “Darren, what is your secret to having people truly open up and show you who they really are?” And he kind of smiled and he looked at me, and he said, “Two words.” And I said, “Lay it on me.” And he said, “Go first.” And I said, “Go first. Okay, tell me about this.”

And he said, “If you want to motivate somebody, find out what motivates them and help them achieve that. Say go first.” He said, “If you want somebody to trust you, go first and reveal something that’s raw and candid, and show them that this is a safe space. They have the psychological safety that you’ve given them a part of you, and it’s safe for them to return the favor.” And I thought this was so fascinating of the idea of going first because, and it’s maybe it’s the cautious or skeptic part of my mind, it’s like, “What’s the difference between going first and oversharing because that could backfire on you?”

And I know you had Jon Levy on the show and he was talking about the Pratfall effect, and that is a very important part to consider of conveying credibility before vulnerability, and establishing that responsibility and that point of authority, and then that reveal can really draw people closer. And if they’re questioning your competence to begin with, then you’re tripping over yourself and you’re flooring the gas pedal with all of this candid vulnerability, it can really backfire and create distance instead of that connection.

So, this notion of putting aside your perfect persona is really going first with a piece of yourself. And one of those examples that we recently saw, I’m a big Will Smith fan, and when I saw Will Smith pull stuff, “Hey, I’m going to be real with you all. I’m in the worst shape of my life.” I don’t know if you’ve seen his photo, but he put himself out there. He’s just in his boxer shorts showing that the guy that’s all muscles and cut in movies, for the first time, he doesn’t look that way. And it gave permission for people to talk about their bodies and their pandemic bodies, and celebrate the fact that, “Hey, we’re all in this together. We can all get through this together.” And he’s inspired people going on new workout routines and transformations just by going first with the challenge he has. So, I think it shows up in many ways.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. And I do want to hear if you’ve cracked the code on that oversharing kind of complexity there because, I guess, what comes to mind is I was chatting with one of my podcast guests, and I guess he already had tremendous authority and credibility in my eyes because I’ve researched him, I know his bio and stuff. And I say, “How are you doing?” He’s like, “Oh, you know, it’s been a difficult week. I’ve got a son who’s been struggling with drug addiction, and we thought we had that kicked, but, unfortunately, this happened.”

So, he shared that and it only took maybe 20 seconds to reveal, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry.” And the way I received it, I did not find that off-putting at all. I felt for him, I thought, “Oh, man, this has got to be so hard. I’ve got toddlers today. I can only imagine struggling with that in the future.” And it really did, it made me like and trust him a bundle, and I’ve been sort of eager to connect with him whenever I’m in his city.

So, in a way, and that’s pretty darn vulnerable in terms of what’s going on in your life for real. That’s hard and that’s real. So, I did not receive it in, “Whoa, easy, fellow. Simmer down. Too much information.” I didn’t receive it that way. I don’t know, maybe some people would, but I don’t know, he just seemed so great, it would be hard to imagine.

So, I don’t know, how do you think about that dance?

Riaz Meghji
If I’m going to share something like that, the question I’m asking myself is, “Is the person or is the audience ready to hear this? Are they in a space where they’re ready and willing to accept the emotional intensity I could bring on them?” And I’m not surprised by your reaction. You’ve mastered your craft doing these interviews. This is what you do to bring out the best in people to see who they really are. But if we’re on the street and the circumstances, things are moving fast and there’s only a limited amount of time, and I’m dropping that on somebody, I don’t think I’ve set them up for success if, say, we’re walking and they’re trying to get to a destination, maybe they’re trying to pick up their kids. They’re not in the right space to be able to receive it and support me.

So, I think it’s important to pick the spot. And if the spot is right, and there is time, and somebody is willing to accept it, I think the flipside of that is if I’m going to share something that I’m struggling with, I really look at, “How can I share a bit of the transformation going on?” Because I find, as listeners, we’re always looking for that moment of, “How is this moment, how is this story, how could this make my life better?” And if I’m going to share a bit of the struggle and the conflict, I always think, “What is the point of reflection or lesson I’ve learned through this that I could share with somebody if they were to hit this roadblock too?”

So, it’s almost like the struggle becomes a share and point of service to be like, “Here’s what I’ve worked through, here’s what I’ve learned, and here’s what I’m still trying to get to.” And that awareness, that reflection, and perhaps a teaching moment, gives somebody a gift of real-life perspective as opposed to just an emotional dump where they’re thinking, “What do I do with this?” And I think Ray Dalio said this, and this really stuck with me, of pain plus reflection equals progress.

And I think that’s a powerful statement. And I also think about all the things we’ve individually gone through during the pandemic, when somebody asks, “Tell me about something that happened during the past year that had a positive impact on your life? Or, tell me about something that really changed things for you.” That’s on us to really absorb, reflect, write about these moments in our lives and, one teach ourselves, and then, two, have the opportunity to share in profound ways so people will be grateful for the share, not only because, hey, you trusted me with that but you’re teaching me as well about what the struggle really means and how to work through it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s great. And it’s handy and it is of service. And, in a way, it’s, I don’t know, maybe it’s a sort of a sad commentary on human nature. It’s like, “Okay, so you’re struggling but what’s in this for me?” And, yet, that’s kind of there, so if you serve that up alongside, it’s helpful. So, I’m all for it.

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, and to that point, Pete, if the audience is asking, “What’s in it for me?” If you are a close confidant, there’s an opportunity, maybe that person who’s struggling is not giving you something but maybe they’re coming to you for something, and that can light you up as well of that, “What’s in it for me?” “Here’s my chance to help you,” and that’s a powerful point of building a relationship too. Because I find a lot of the times, we’re just quick to interrupt or drop unsolicited advice, but if I’m surrendering and saying, “Hey, Pete, can you help me out with this? Like, you’ve interviewed so many people, what’s your take on this?” That’s a chance to celebrate your wisdom and that’s a powerful tool as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, let’s hear the fourth one – be assertively empathetic. How do we do that?

Riaz Meghji
When you hear those two words, assertively empathetic, does that strike you as odd, like those two can’t go together?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s different because the emotional vibe of assertive is like, “I’m stating this is my position and this is what I need,” versus empathetic, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I really want to understand.” They have a different emotional charge to them. So, yeah, when they’re side by side, it’s unique.

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, I asked that question because I find anyone that’s come across it, they say to me, “Well, is that an oxymoron? Like, how do you do both?” And the assertive side of things kind of touches on what we talked about in the listening without distraction of checking ourselves. In this time where it’s a polarized climate, whether it’s political views or just different ways of living life, it is so easy when we disagree on something to jump in, to challenge, to interrupt, to give that unsolicited advice to what we just talked to, and forget about the idea of acknowledging that person.

So, the assertive side really comes in checking ourselves and acknowledging, putting the focus on acknowledging that person even if you disagree with them, and allow them to express where they’re at and what they’re experiencing. And our philosophy really is, “How can we discover before we dismiss any type of idea and be curious longer?” And when we’ve acknowledged them and we’ve kind of heard about what’s going on, confirming, “Okay, our understanding is this. Here’s what you’re going through,” and then once the relationship has been prioritized, then it’s the opportunity to bring in logic and focus on what we can agree on.

So, like, “Pete, what’s the real challenge here for you? Like, what does your ideal scenario look like? And what would it take for this to work for you?” And the big goal of this, as we check our own emotional limitations and put that focus of “Look at you” is greater than “Look at me” in this, especially when things are heated, is we want to create a dynamic where it would be you and me, Pete, versus the problem instead of me versus you. And that takes assertiveness to check our own inclinations to jump in. And then the empathetic aspect to lean in, be curious, even when we disagree, to just give someone the opportunity to be understood.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I really appreciated those sample questions you were dropping there because I got the vibe. It’s like you were assertive in the sense of it’s like, “Oh, you’re really going for some territory here,” and how you’re approaching it. It’s like the heart of the matter, it’s the real deal stuff, and we’re not getting distracted by the irrelevant pieces. So, in that sense, it is assertive, but the content that we’re getting after is empathetic in terms of like the emotional stuff that we’re going for there.

Riaz Meghji
Yeah, and the power of questions really stands out. I found it fascinating, there was a study at the University of Wisconsin back, I think this was back in 2013 on difficult conversations. And they said, “Well, how do you create a safe space when someone has to convey negative news or you completely disagree on something?” And they talked about the notion of how we can own our own emotions. And it came down to the use of “I” statements. Like, “I’m feeling frustrated here,” “I’m feeling exhausted,” “I should’ve known better with this, Pete,” or even using the “I” statement in the question. Like, “Pete, how did I fail to show up for you here?” or, “Pete, what’s the question I failed to ask to understand where you’re at?”

All of that is a great deal of assertiveness to own the fact that something has been missed on my side, but, at the same time, the direction is complete empathy because you’re trying to get to the understanding of bringing somebody in so you show it’s us in this together and we can productively disagree as opposed to just have an unproductive confrontation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Perfect. All right. I’m just going to leave it there. I have nothing to add. That’s excellent. Let’s hear about making people feel famous.

Riaz Meghji
This final habit really kind of touches on what I believe people need most right now. And given everything we’ve been through, I feel like what we benefit from the most is having a cheerleader, or some sort of champion in our corner, and someone that’s going to say, “I see what you’re doing, Pete. Like, I see the great work you’re doing in this podcast. That previous episode you had with that certain guest, that gave me something that made my days better.”

And it’s this point of appreciation, recognition, but above all, specificity. And when we talk about this generic, “How are you?” the easy thing you throw out, it’s autopilot. It’s also autopilot, if I’ve listened to an episode that you’ve done, and for me to just email you and say, “Hey, Pete, great job on that last episode.” It’s such a throwaway. It’s such a missed opportunity for me to make you feel valued in terms of the work you’re doing but, more importantly, hone in on what it was. Because I can say, “Great job,” but the question on your side might be like, “Well, what exactly made it a great job?”

And a simple way to make people feel famous is how we practice specificity and how we praise others, and how we make it specific to a certain moment, how we make it personal of like, “Listen, this is how it changed my life.” How we make it public and champion it and share it on social media, and say, “Hey, check this guy’s podcast out. You want to be awesome? This is it. This is the place to be,” but connect it back to purpose, and saying, “This is how I made a difference in my life and here’s what I’m trying to do.”

And if we can do that and practice that habit of specificity and lifting people up and making them famous, so to speak, above all, it creates this culture of feeling valued and appreciated when we have this opportunity now to start to go back to work, and organizations are going to try to retain talent, there are going to be some big factors when people are deciding, “Where do I want to work? How do I want to work? And who do I want to work with?” And this final habit really touches in the idea of being seen and having a powerful sense of belonging. And it’s a simple thing we can do but I think it can have a profound effect.

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

Riaz Meghji
I just hope, if you’re listening to this right now, that the opportunity of breaking out of autopilot mode is something we all can control. And the whole objective of this message, if every conversation counts, is just to encourage people to just be more intentional whether that’s with how we listen, how we get curious, how empathetic we could be, or how specific we could be when we’re trying to lift people up. Let’s break out of autopilot mode right now and find ways to just energize our relationships and lift each other up.

Insert sponsor: Care.com

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

Riaz Meghji
This one was given to me by my editor of my book last year when we’re writing in 2020 because I’m totally the guy that overanalyzes and overthink things, and my editor said, “Look, you cannot edit a blank page.” And that really resonated with me because the notion of trying to get it perfect the first time, I mean, you put aside your perfect persona. The editor encouraged, “Just put it down on paper whatever idea that might be and then let’s go to work on it and make it stronger and poke holes in it. But we can’t do that unless you just have the courage to just put down that initial thought.” So, I love the simplicity of it. You cannot edit a blank page. If anyone has a writer’s block, just put it out there, test it, experiment with it, and that’s how we can make it better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Riaz Meghji
I really dig The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. And the reason I dig it is the simplicity of the questions that he asks. I mean, sure, it’s a book about coaching, but it really demonstrates the power of curiosity to open up windows of stories and conversations and deepening relationships. Simple read. Digestible read. Memorable read. So, The Coaching Habit is one of my faves.

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

Riaz Meghji
Well, I like this Blue Yeti mic. How’s the audio sounding so far on the podcast?

Pete Mockaitis
Sounds pretty good. Not too echo-y which is the only downfall of the Blue Yeti. But when in a low-echo room, it’s just right. So, I agree, for what it’s worth.

Riaz Meghji
You know, building on the simplicity of technology, it’s funny, like working in the keynote spaces and when you have the chance to contribute, the TV side of me wanted to complicate things and think, “Okay, we need this high-tech studio. We need all these things.” But, at the end of the day, the value is the message and how we’re going to move people, make them feel something. And kind of simplifying things, somebody introduced this Blue Yeti mic, I’m like, “Don’t I need like a fancy Shure 570?” And I know those mics are gorgeous. But they’re like, “No, just get the Blue Yeti. They’ll do the job.” So, as a tool, this has helped me. And if it’s sounding good for you and it’s sounding good for you listening, then, hey, I’ll go with the favorite tool as the Yeti.

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

Riaz Meghji
I think two things. The first being that pandemics don’t change our identity. They reveal it. And the big reveal that came from the last year is that human connection isn’t an option. It’s a necessity. And we all felt it at a deep level when those conversations that we’re used to, social rituals of high fives, hugs, handshakes, those are gone, and we lost a piece of what made us a community. And that human connection, now, is up to us to bring that back in impactful ways. So, I think those two thoughts right there about how pandemics impact identity and reveal it, and just the value of human connection, are two thoughts I’d like to share that seem to resonate.

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

Riaz Meghji
Just to the website RiazMeghji.com. I’ll spell it out because who can spell that name just hearing it for the first time? It’s R-I-A-Z M-E-G-H-J-I.com.

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

Riaz Meghji
Reach out to somebody. If you’re listening to this, reach out to somebody in the next 24 hours. Maybe it’s somebody that gave you a helping hand, maybe it’s somebody that gave you a confidence boost over the last few months, look, maybe it’s somebody that gave you a wakeup call, and called you out so they could call you up, and maybe you didn’t let them know how much that meant. And if you’ve been thinking about somebody, my challenge is reach out to them. Get specific on how they made a difference for you and watch the dynamic that can create.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Riaz, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of enjoyable conversations in the future.

Riaz Meghji
Pete, love you, man. Thank you for inviting the message on and just being in conversation in the space.

677: Optimizing Your LinkedIn for Maximum Opportunities with Donna Serdula

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Donna Serdula breaks down her four-point methodology for getting the most out of LinkedIn.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The crucial first step to building a solid LinkedIn presence 
  2. How to dramatically increase your reach with keywords
  3. The simplest way to grow your network tenfold 

 

About Donna

Donna Serdula pioneered the concept of LinkedIn profile optimisation, realising early on that the LinkedIn profile was so much more than just an online resume.

A job change in 2006 led her back to LinkedIn as Donna looked for tools to help her build a sales territory. It was during this time she had her LinkedIn epiphany and forged her LinkedIn 4 point methodology. By integrating LinkedIn into her sales process, she found tremendous success.

In 2009, she walked away from her successful sales career and founded Vision Board Media and LinkedIn-Makeover.com.

She is the author of the book LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies, published by Wiley.

Donna has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, Time’s Money Section, Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, LA Times, NBC, SiriusXM Radio’s The Focus Group, and many other news outlets.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Donna Serdula Interview Transcript

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

Donna Serdula
Hi, Pete. Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about branding, LinkedIn profile optimizing, representing yourself well. And what’s fun because I was just on your LinkedIn profile and, right off the bat, you impressed me with your use of the pronunciation feature which most people don’t use. And you didn’t just say “Donna Serdula,” which is what I did but you said, “My name is Donna Serdula. I help professionals represent themselves or brand themselves on LinkedIn and beyond.” I was like, “That’s awesome.” Like, you got a few seconds to work with and so you, right there at the very beginning, you’ve made it count, and I was impressed. So, it looks like we’re talking to the right person.

Donna Serdula
Well, thank you. They give you 10 seconds and if they’re going to give you 10 seconds, I say use all 10 seconds. I will tell you, right when they first put that out there, I was using like a little bit of the Batman theme from the 1960s Adam West show, I had that as the introduction and then my name, but that was cute in the very beginning, and then I decided, “Let’s get this a little bit more professional.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, well done. And it’s funny, I listened to mine, it’s like, “I’m a little soft. I should do it again.” All right, so I’m already inspired.

Donna Serdula
But here’s the thing. With your name, I kept looking at it in my email, and I was like, “Mocca? Mikatitis?” and then I went to your profile, hit that button, got the pronunciation, and thought, “Why didn’t I see it immediately?” But it’s perfect, like for my last name, very few people know how to pronounce it. And for those people who have an ethnic name, I think it’s a great feature. It helps people and it makes everyone a little bit more comfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re going to talk about representing yourself on LinkedIn. And I’d love it if maybe you could kick us off by sharing what are some of the most wild ways you’ve seen people represent themselves maybe in terms of their titles or the headlines that made you go, “Huh?”

Donna Serdula
There’s a lot of ninjas out there. There’s a lot of ninjas, there’s a lot of rock stars

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, ninjas and rock stars.

Donna Serdula
But I like it. I have to admit when a person tries, I like it. I really like it. What I don’t like is when a person doesn’t try in any way and they upload a really just terrible profile picture and they just copy and paste old stuff that was developed years before, and they call it a day. To me, it’s a horrible, horrible thing. I really feel that people should think and really say to themselves, “How do I want others to perceive me? Where do I want to go in my life? Where do I want to go in my career?” and really be very thoughtful when you craft that profile because people are looking. They want to know what to think about you. And so, if you want to be that ninja, if you want to be that rock star, girl, go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. Well, could you maybe kick us off by sharing a cool story of someone who did kind of rethink how they’re representing themselves and tweaked some things on LinkedIn and beyond and saw some cool results from it?

Donna Serdula
This is what we do every day, our clients come to us and they have problems talking about themselves, telling their story. It’s really, really hard to write about yourself. I’m thinking of a very specific client who had come to us. He was 56 years old, and the writing was on the wall, his position was going to be eliminated. He knew it. He knew the end date was coming. He was in technology and he was scared because at 56, he felt he was so far over the hill. He didn’t know where he was going to go, where he was going to get hired. He’d been at this organization for years.

And I remember him calling me and the sense of fear and dread and anxiety that was in his voice, and I remember saying, “Let’s take the bull by the horns and let’s make sure that you’re presenting yourself as who you are, that you’re relevant, that you’re interesting, that you’re energized, that you have so much to offer.” And we worked on the profile and we told his story, and we talked about who he was and what he represented and what he did and how it helped others. We infused the right keywords throughout that profile, and we did the same with his resume.

And he called me back six months later that he had gotten a job closer to his home. He was making 40% more.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Donna Serdula
Why 40% more? Not because he did such a great job but because he’d been in that company for so many years, he had never truly gotten the correct upticks in salary that he would’ve gotten if he was in just the regular market. And he was so gracious and so thankful that that’s what happens when you decide to represent yourself and tell your story and put yourself out there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Very cool. Well, a huge success story, so that’s encouraging and hopeful and inspiring for folks who may want to do some things that shake things up. So, can you tell us how do you start thinking about this whole thing? How do you represent yourself? And then maybe let’s get into some particulars for LinkedIn as a platform to do that optimally.

Donna Serdula
Sure. I believe that the very first step, at least with LinkedIn and branding yourself on that platform, it’s really important, Pete, to say, “Why am I on LinkedIn? What am I hoping to achieve?” Not everyone is on LinkedIn for job search. Some people are on it because they want to prospect and sell more. Some are on it because people are looking at them and they want to make sure that they’re utilizing it for reputation management, that when a person looks at them, they see someone who’s impressive, someone who has earned their confidence.

Others are doing it for executive branding to tell that story, to be perceived at a different level, and there could be combinations. But it’s really important to know why you’re on LinkedIn because your goal is going to determine your story and how you present yourself. If you’re in sales and your goal is to sell more but your profile is written like a resume and that goal is more for recruiters that you love to prospect, you’re just going to turn off your target audience which is prospects and potential clients.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. So, could I hear maybe a little bit of those implications in terms of, okay, if I’m in a selling of products or services mode, as opposed to selling myself mode, what are some key things I do differently based on the pathway I’m going down?

Donna Serdula
Yeah, it’s so important to really envision that audience, that person who you want to be reading the profile. And think in terms of if they were searching for someone like you, if they didn’t know your name, what would those keywords be that they’re putting into the search bar in trying to find you, to get close to someone like you. Those words are words that you’d want to infuse through your profile. That’s how you’re going to get found more often. And very, very few people ever really think that deeply about LinkedIn, they go, “Oh, I copy and paste my resume and I’ll be done.”

But LinkedIn is a professional network but it’s also a search engine, and recruiters and hiring managers are using it, but not just hiring managers. People in the media are using it, people who are looking for talent, who have opportunity to provide, they want to find someone like you, so you want to make it really easy for them to find you. But knowing what you want out of it and what that person would be interested in, that’s what’s going to shape the story.

So, what does a recruiter want? What are you targeting in that regard? Or, what’s going to impress a person? What have you done that you’re proud of that would make a difference? And once you have that down, jot it down. That’s what’s going to start to shape your narrative within the About section of your profile.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. Well, that sounds fundamental and yet often overlooked.

Donna Serdula
It’s so easy. Why doesn’t anyone do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you take some time. Okay, seriously. Who do I want to see this? And when they see it, what do I want them to walk away thinking? And so, you’re thinking through that. And so with that kind of bullseye in mind, what are some of the key factors that make a profile make a great impression in terms of, “Hey, this is remarkable. This person really seems like they could be a winner,” versus, “Oh, okay. Next”?

Donna Serdula
I hate bullets. I hate bulleted lists. I just despise that. I also hate huge blocks of impenetrable texts where there’s not a single line break. It could be the most warmest, engaging copy ever written but if it’s hard for an eye to scan through, you’re going to turn people off. So, it’s not just what you write but it’s also how you format it through the profile. Like, line breaks, that enter or return key should be a good friend of yours. Don’t think like the old-fashioned paragraph concept that we were taught in school. You can actually break it up a little bit more, into more of like ideas so the easier it is to scan, the better.

I would say first person narrative. There are certain times, I have some clients that come to me and they have done the most amazing things. They’ve lived these incredible lives. Their accomplishments are huge. And when they write in the first person, it feels weird to them. It just doesn’t feel right. Those are very few situations where I’m like, “Okay, let’s write in third. It’s okay if you write in third person.” But for most people, they know that you’ve written it yourself, or you’ve hired someone to write it for you. You should write in first person, and write it in a manner where it’s warm, it’s engaging, it tells that story. It’s who you are. Why you do what you do? What does it mean to others? What do you stand for? What do you represent?

And when you talk about that, ultimately, it’s your why. I think it really resonates with people and they love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I hear you there. And I’m looking at yours right now as you’re speaking. So, I hear what you’re saying in terms of breaking up the text so we’ve got some shorter paragraphs, maybe just a sentence at times, or, “Well, I do,” in the shortest. “Do you know what makes a LinkedIn profile stand out from the crowd?” New paragraph. “Well, I do.” That’s great. Okay, I’m intrigued. Okay. What are you about? So, I’m pulled in.

And then in terms of breaking up the text, you have a nice little bold, capital SERVICES, AUTHOR, SPEAKER, and then a little bit of an underline there, and that’s just easy-peasy to do, there’s no special tricks. You just push the bold button?

Donna Serdula
There’s no bold button.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, now you’re a ninja and a rock star, Donna. How do we do it?

Donna Serdula
So, that is actually faux text. It’s Unicode. And so, if you visit my website LinkedIn-Makeover.com and you go to the free tools, I have this little wizard or online app, whatever you want to call it, where you type in, and it will apply formatting, but it’s not real formatting. It just looks like text but it’s more of like code and you copy it and you put it into your profile. And, voila! You suddenly have italics, you have bold, you have underline. You can even have cursive if you wanted to.

The one thing though, Pete, to know is that it looks like the word but it’s not so you shouldn’t be doing everything in that because it’s not optimized for search. The other thing is if a person who is blind and they’re using a screen reader, they’re not going to hear the right words because it’s, again, it’s fake texts. But, in small doses, it’s fabulous.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Donna, I just love talking to someone who’s just delved deep into the details, they’re somebody like, “It’s not actually texts. It’s code. So, here are some implications of that. Noted. It’s going to look great with some tradeoffs so use it appropriately but just know that you can use it,” and just about nobody does because I don’t think I’ve seen it before. So, kudos, Donna.

Donna Serdula
Thank you. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Okay. So, that’s some of the particulars in terms of looking great and being friendly to the eyeball such that they’ll actually read it. And so then, what are some key thoughts for what we put in there? We want it to be friendly. We want it to make a good impression. Any particular do’s and don’ts?

Donna Serdula
I recognize that it’s 2021 and I shouldn’t have to say that the profile picture is important but, even to this day, it’s something that so many people really struggle with. So, a good do is work on getting a professionally taken photo. It does make a difference. Don’t just go with a selfie with weird things in the background. Don’t show your shoulders or your elbows. It’s a headshot for a reason, especially on a mobile phone which reduces it even smaller. You really want to make sure that it’s your face that’s filling that circle, so that’s a huge thing.

There’s a background graphic that very few people use, and this is a great place to really illustrate your brand and subtly suggest to people who don’t even have to read anything who you are and what you do and what you represent, so definitely utilize that. There’s a lot of areas to upload, photos and things like that, links to websites and whatnot. It’s now called the featured section. It actually provides like a carousel at the top of your profile, and that’s a fabulous place. Very few people don’t use it but I would definitely say it’s a do depending upon your job and who you are and what you do. It should be relatively easy to find something to populate that area.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we went right into some tactical stuff. Maybe I should zoom out a smidge. You’ve got a full-blown four-point methodology. Can you kind of walk us through that a little bit?

Donna Serdula
Step one, know your goal.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Donna Serdula
Know why you’re on it. We talked a little bit about that. Two, optimize your profile to your goal. Infuse your keywords. Tell the world who you are and why you shine. Three, start to grow your network. You need to connect. Have you ever seen that movie Glengarry Glen Ross?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, coffee is for closers.

Donna Serdula
Yeah. A, B, C. Always be…well, I like to say always be connecting. Always be connecting. A lot of people say to me, “Ugh, I don’t get LinkedIn.” And then I look at their profile, they’ve got like 10 connections, or even just a hundred connections, and you really do need to have a network, so try to get that online network to reflect your offline network. So, connect, connect, connect. So, that’s three.

Four, so now you want to engage. Now, you want to start to go to that homepage and scroll through and comment and like and share, and start to post. That’s when you can network in your pajamas. That’s when things should start to come together for you. And that’s when you’re going to start to see that there is opportunity in those hills out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so we’ve talked a bit about the first two. Let’s hit keywords for a bit now. Well, hey, if you’ve gone deep into Unicode, you may have some answers that I don’t know. So, I guess I’ve played just a little bit of the Google search engine optimization game. Boy, that is a full-time operation and many people have made that their careers in terms saying, “Okay, so what are the keywords? What’s a traffic associated with those keywords? What’s the competition for those keywords? Where can I win? How can I write content that hits those and gets me surfaced in Google?”

And hopefully it’s good as opposed to, “Oh, man.” Well, I think we’ve all read it in terms of, “You might be asking yourself, ‘How do I get a good price on a mortgage?’ Well, the answer to getting a good price on a mortgage involves three key things. The first step to getting a good price on a good mortgage…” You know, it’s like…

Donna Serdula
Yeah, the redundant, yeah, the repetition of the key phrase.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we don’t want to do that. But I’m wondering, like is there any keyword research tools that give us a sense for, I don’t know, like Python versus Django? I barely know what I’m talking about here, so apologies, Python coders. But you get the idea. It’s like there are some opportunities where I can describe a given skill or set of expertise with many different potential keywords. So, how do I know which ones to go for and optimize for?

Donna Serdula
And, sadly, when you’re on LinkedIn, in your account, looking at your profile, it really is almost like pin the tail on the donkey, wearing a blindfold. LinkedIn doesn’t give a lot of insight into how well your profile is performing for keywords, what are the most searched keywords. Those are things that they kind of hold in the back. They don’t show their cards very easily.

What I recommend doing is this. It’s knowing, “What do you feel would a person be searching for if they were looking for you?” And, yes, there is a whole bunch of different keywords. Choose the ones that you feel are the most obvious, the most used, and then use them organically through your profile. The fields that are most sensitive for search – your headline. That right there, if you can infuse top keywords in there, you will find that you turn up higher and more often for those keywords.

If you can use those keywords not in a repetitive or obnoxious way but you can organically use it in the narrative of your About section, that’s going to be very helpful. Again, not in a repetitive way, not in a bulleted list type of way, but you’re weaving them into your story. That’s a good thing. Job titles, again, perfect for keywords. Very few people do but that area does make a difference as does the job description.

So, if you could put it in those areas, and really think, “If I’m looking for a job,” look at the job description, look at a couple job descriptions, highlight. What are the words that you keep seeing repeated over and over and over again? What are those core competencies? What are those applications that you need to know? That will give you an idea. And then what you do, Pete, is you wait and then you watch, and you see. Are you getting hits to your profile?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And they’ll tell you, like, “You’re viewed this many times,” so you know that. And I think it also tells you, “You’ve shown up this many times in search.” So, views of my profile – 1500. I’m looking at mine now. And so, I could see that and then I can just peruse, well, you looked at me. Hi, there.

Donna Serdula
I like to do my due diligence.

Pete Mockaitis
And I can kind of peruse. It tells you, “Found you via LinkedIn profile,” and it will also say, “Found you via homepage,” and found people similar to you but it doesn’t also say, “Found you via search.”

Donna Serdula
I don’t think it does.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you set it straight.

Donna Serdula
But when they say, “Found you through the profile,” you can almost surmise that it was either they were doing a name-based search or they were doing a keyword search, and you popped up.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think your point associated with just knowing your audience is huge because, well, I looked at this once back in the day when I was doing more Myers Briggs training, which I’m capable of doing but that’s not been my focus lately. And so, you find tons of profiles that will have MBTI in their headline as their title, which, as a type practitioner, I know, and many others do, that that stands for Myers Brigg Type Indicator, which is the name of the tool.

However, I have learned that most people, when they’re searching for that, do not search for MBTI; they search for Myers Briggs. And so, just knowing that and, for all you Myers Briggs practitioners on LinkedIn, here’s a free one for you. Just about no one says Myers Briggs in their title even though that’s what more people look for. So, you can sort of try that out and I guess just maybe ask your target audience, like, “Hey, so if you’re kind of looking for someone to do a personality workshop for you, like what might you type into LinkedIn?” It’s like, “I don’t know, maybe Myers Briggs, maybe DISC.” It’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I know she did not say MBTI.” So, that gets you there.

Donna Serdula
Yeah, sometimes you get in the weeds of your own knowledge and you have to break through and step out and look at it. I see that a lot of times when people say to me, “Oh, I’m a dynamic person and I do all…” they’re using these crazy words and crazy jargon, and it’s like, “Talk to me like I’m a three-year old. Talk to your audience like they’re a three-year old. It’s going to help you really simplify the message and make it so much more accessible to the world at large.” Of course, you weigh that because if your target audience really does talk like that then that’s great. Go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true.

Donna Serdula
But I think sometimes people do get a little too caught up in the weeds. They’re so close they can’t gain that focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great because I’m thinking I just recently learned the term capital allocator. I didn’t know what that meant. But there may be times you want to call yourself a capital allocator based on who you’re attracting, at times you want to call yourself a financial planner based on who you’re going after, even though there’s a fair bit of overlap in capital allocators and financial planners, “Well, Pete, actually, there’s several distinctions much like Python and Django.” But that’s a great perspective there in terms of how they would speak. And it’s unlikely someone is going to search for a dynamic multi-potentialite even though you might be that.

Donna Serdula
You might be. I remember a very specific client of mine had said to me, “Donna, before the profile, I was getting a ton of hits. I was getting found and I was getting a lot more inquiries on LinkedIn.” And, of course, I heard that, I was like, “Do you hate me? This sounds bad.” And he said, “No. Since you worked on the profile, you really dialed in to the right audience. It’s much more qualified, so, yeah, I’m getting less but the ones that I’m getting really want me and I’m aligned to those opportunities that they’re presenting to me. Before, I was getting all types of opportunities that I wasn’t interested in and was a waste of time.” So, you do have to sort of weigh it. You want to make sure that it’s the right audience and you’ve got the right message, and what’s coming to is good opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so great. And, as you say it, I think all the little pieces are connecting here in terms of like your image and your banner, was the term I used there, you got your headshot and you’ve got your other image at the top.

Donna Serdula
Yeah, we call it the background graphic but banner works too.

Pete Mockaitis
Your headshot, your background graphic, and it all comes together in terms of telling the story, like the individual pieces, and you might optimize incorrectly. I remember in my early days, I got some headshots and I thought, “Oh, man, this one I looked really…” I thought I looked hot. I was wearing a black buttoned-down and a dark background, and I thought, “Oh, man,” there’s like a smouldering gaze, it’s like, “Okay, yeah, Pete, you do. Great job. They caught a good angle. But, really, we need you to show up as the friendly high-energy speaker guy and not a model.” So, I was like, “Oh, yeah, good point. Good point.”

So, I might look not as good in a, I don’t know, GQ sense of the word in one headshot but, for the audience and the impression I’m trying to give, it works better even though, “My rosacea is more prominent in that photo,” well, we’re going to go with that one because it’s going to get the job done that we’re looking to get done.

Donna Serdula
I know it sounds so strange but, I always say, people feel this need to, because LinkedIn is this professional network, they want to look serious. But when they look serious, they tend to look angry. And you want to seem approachable, you want to seem friendly, you want to make it easy for a person to want to reach out to learn more about you. And so, upload a picture where you do look more friendly. And that, of course, trumps the professional picture. If a headshot, it may be well taken, but if it’s not presenting you in that friendly light, it’s not going to work.

I’m going to tell you another thing, Pete. This is huge and it’s so obvious. People who don’t include their contact information, they don’t put their phone number in, they don’t put their email address, and they make it very, very hard to reach you. One of my biggest pet peeves.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think maybe some people have a worry or a concern, like, “Oh, I’m going to get all these spam callers or all these random calling me.” But I’ll tell you, I’ve got my phone number in there. Hello, listeners, you can give me a ring. My phone number is in there and just about never do I get super random calls that I think are traced back to LinkedIn. There’s robo spam callers but they hit everybody indiscriminately. So, I think, yeah, if anyone has any worries on that dimension, in my own experience, and you’ve got a lot more LinkedIn stuff than I do, it’s really not that noticeable. I don’t think I’ve suffered any negative consequences for having freely shared that contact info there. What’s your take?

Donna Serdula
I believe if you want opportunity to knock, you’ve got to tell it what door to knock on. It’s just that simple. Put your information out there. I actually wouldn’t mind if I got a random Telepass calling if I also knew that I was getting all these fabulous opportunities as well. It’s almost a balance. But I agree, I really don’t get a lot of garbage. I get people who want my services, who need my expertise, people that I can help. And, to me, that’s a win-win.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. All right. So, let’s talk about build the connections and engaging. How do we get that well?

Donna Serdula
Yeah, I hate to say this. I really do. I feel like it’s been overstated but send connection requests, put in a nice little note, say something personable, let the person know why you’re connecting, unless, of course…and this is the thing. If you know the person, like I’m going to connect with you after this show. I don’t think I need to say, “Hey, we just talked an hour ago. I think you’re going to remember me.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, yeah, Donna.”

Donna Serdula
So, in that situation, I don’t have a problem not adding a personalized note, like, to me you don’t have to do it always across the board. But if you are kind of going outside of your real network and you’re connecting to people from maybe a long time ago, it is nice to add a little bit of a personalized note to say, “Hey, do you remember me?” And I think it starts that conversation off. So, hit connect, give a personalized note if the moment calls for it, and keep connecting. It’s just not something that you do once. It’s something that you do often. It should be a part of your normal business world that, as you meet people, as you go into meetings, connect.

There’s that quote, “Your network is your net worth.” And it’s something that I think a lot of people dismiss. And I remember years and years ago when I was in college, a woman came and was like, “Oh, you got to create a network.” Like it just sounded so intimidating and strange. And, really, all it is is keeping in touch with people, being friendly, popping up to say hello, making connections. That’s all it really is. And with LinkedIn, it’s a very easy way to connect and grow that network and continue to stay in touch with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah.

Donna Serdula
So, that’s it. It’s that simple but it’s something that very few people do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so let’s say you’re one of those folks who has a hundred connections on LinkedIn, and you and I know that such a person knows many more people on LinkedIn, and they could go ahead and connect with him, and then the whole world opens up to you. And that’s what I found in terms of one side said, “Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and find some people I know, and I’m going to connect.”

And then, I don’t know, I felt just like a surge of powerful feeling just in terms of saying, “Okay. Well, shoot, now that I’ve spent a little time on this, like a huge universe is now open to me in terms of secondary connections. So, if I have like a hundred connections before, and then built it out to a thousand, it’s like, wow, I could get introductions so readily to so many places now. That’s hugely cool.” So, if someone is at a hundred, how do you recommend they get to a thousand real connections relatively painlessly?

Donna Serdula
Well, they could certainly upload their email address book and allow LinkedIn to do like a match, un-match and decide who’s already there, and just mass connect. That’s one way. Another easy way is to go into the My Network icon and scroll down that page. There’s a People You May Know area where LinkedIn makes these connections, they say, “Oh, you’re connected to Pete, and Pete’s connected to so and so, then you might be connected to that person.” So, that’s an easy way to do it.

I actually kind of just like the old-fashion sit down and really start thinking about the people that you’ve met throughout your career and your school and life in general, and just keep jotting them down in a notebook and see who’s there, see who’s connected. And then if you know someone, you have like a history with a person, you could go to their profile and look at their connections, and plod through that, connecting with the people that you know in common. So, those are all ways that you can grow your network.

But what’s really important is when you grow that network, you’re going to be found by more people because when a person is searched in LinkedIn, when they’re doing a name-based search, yeah, they’re searching the entire database of users. But if a regular free user is doing a keyword-based search, think of yourself, when you do that, you’re seeing first-degree connections, you’re seeing second-degree connections, and you’re seeing third-degree connections. That’s what you’re searching. So, if you want to be found by more people, and you want to discover more people, you need to be in more networks. And that opens up and it really explodes being found and getting found.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that flywheel, that virtuous cycle really shows up because, let’s say, you have a hundred, you spend a little bit of time and then you connect with an extra 50. Well, now, LinkedIn has so much more useful information to share with more people you know, it’s like, “Well, as a matter of fact, I do know that person, and that person, and that person.” So, I find that it goes pretty darn quick in terms of getting there, it’s like, you make a bundle of connection requests, a week later, they’ve accepted. And now there’s a whole new bundle. Repeat, repeat, repeat, like, “Hey, what do you know?” In a couple of months, you went from a hundred to a thousand, and it didn’t take much time and it’s kind of fun, like, “Oh, what’s this guy up to? Oh, wow, it’s good time.”

Donna Serdula
Yeah, it’s true. And when you connect, use it as an excuse to maybe reach out and start more conversations. If you’re going to do a huge burst and you’re going from a hundred to a thousand, it might not be possible, but do try. As you’re connecting, see if they’re active on LinkedIn. And if they are, maybe just bookmark their activity and go back and check to see what they’re posting, and then engage with them.

And when you start to engage with certain people on LinkedIn who are themselves active, you’ll start to see that they fill your feed more often because LinkedIn likes to show their feed. They like their feed to be people that you know talking about the things that you care about. And so, follow the right hashtags, connect with the right people, engage with them on that feed, and you’ll start to find that LinkedIn is fun. It’s people that you know talking about the things you care about.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And then let’s talk about engaging. And, particularly, I’m curious about any pro tips on how to request an introduction? Like, let’s say, you’ve got your network, and you say, “Oh, wow, I’ve got second-degree connections and all kinds of places I’d like to learn about maybe to work or to sell or whatnot.” Any best practices for how we make that request, like, “Could you introduce me to so and so?”

Donna Serdula
Yeah, at one time, LinkedIn had a very structured process for doing that. They don’t now. If you’re looking for an intro button, you’re not going to find it. And the way you do it is more manual. You look at a person, you find them, you see who do you know that’s connected to them, and then you just send them a message. You can also go into More and, say, “Send profile,” and so you can send that person the profile with, “Hey, this is the person I want an introduction to.”

But certain things to keep in mind. I have 29,000 first-degree connections, so if you’re going to ask me to make an introduction to someone, there’s a very good chance that I do not know them personally. So, be aware that if the person has an excessive size network, the answer might be, “I can’t help you,” and that’s okay. Don’t get hung up on that.

But, at the same time, when you’re going to make that introduction, if you could give the person that you’re asking as much information, “This is how you can introduce me to them. This is what it is that I want from them,” and make it very clear who you are and how they can describe you and what you want so that person doesn’t feel like they’re helping a spam artist defraud someone. But make it as very clear as possible, I think you’re going to find that, even if that person doesn’t know that person very well, the introduction will take place and it will be successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Donna, tell me, any other key things you want to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Donna Serdula
I will say this, we touched a little bit about my formatter on the website and we talked about how important the LinkedIn headline is, and I will say to your audience, if you are sitting there and you’re looking at your profile, and you’re thinking, “I really do want to optimize this and I need help,” there is a free resources section on my website and there’s a LinkedIn headline generator. It’s a little app and they just fill out just a couple terms, put a little dot on different buckets that describe them, and it pushes out a headline that’s really awesome, and it’s optimized, and they’ll get more views and it’ll turn up more often in search. So, just know that there is a lot of free help out there and there’s an entire section on my website full of those types of tools.

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

Donna Serdula
This is a Tim Ferriss quote, and it says, “It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things so they aim for mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for realistic goals, paradoxically making them the most competitive.”

And I just love this quote because I find it’s so true. In fact, right before my father died, he had said to me, one of his biggest regrets was that he didn’t dream big enough. And this is something that I’m seeing as I work with my clients, executives, and entrepreneurs, and professionals from all over the world, it’s seeing people who have decided to dream big and go a little further and do a little bit more. And it is scary but you can. You can reach for the stars and you can do it.

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

Donna Serdula
This isn’t like an absolute study but I found this fascinating. If you were to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, it would reach the moon. And I really love that. Just thinking about it, folding it 42 times, I couldn’t imagine that this is true but I started doing some Google. And it’s true, it’s the exponential growth, and this inspires me because it really reminds me that it’s just these little steps will get you somewhere much bigger.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I guess that’s about a trillion sheets thickness there.

Donna Serdula
Oh, yeah. I think someone said you’d need like a sheet the size of the Earth, so you can get close to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, there’s so many parallel, well, takeaways in terms of compound interest or growth, or in terms of like what happens when something just grows and grows and grows. And a favorite book?

Donna Serdula
I’m one of those crazy people. I love the Think and Grow Rich and the Law of Attraction. I love that stuff. I love it so much. My favorite book is one where you either love her or you hate her, but I love The Fountainhead. I just loved it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Donna Serdula
I just recently purchased a reMarkable 2 and it’s a handwriting tablet so you can write on a tablet so you don’t need a notebook after notebook after notebook. It’s just this great gadget and it allows me to just do what I love to do, which is just handwrite but not use any more paper. It’s all digitalized.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Donna Serdula
Which goes back to the reMarkable 2, which is I love journaling and I love to-do lists. And, to me, it’s so important to get what’s inside of you out, and I think there’s something very soulful and inspiring when you can take your pen and drag it. If it’s not paper, then you know the reMarkable 2, but really get your thoughts out there and know what you need to do, but also know what happens so you can start to see repetitions because our memories are so short. We don’t even know how short they are so it’s important, I think, to really record your successes and the record things that have happened so you can remind yourself, and you can stop making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

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

Donna Serdula
I’ve said, “Success on LinkedIn is getting off LinkedIn,” and I often hear people attribute that to me, and I did say it. And, to me, it’s about sometimes people hide on social media and they hide on LinkedIn, and they hide behind the messages and they hide behind the posts. And, really, I find that the best relationships I’ve had from LinkedIn are the ones where I’ve gone to the person’s profile, picked up the phone, and called them. And that’s where the real world is where the real relationships are formed. So, I’d like to say get off LinkedIn, call the person up, take them out for lunch or coffee, and I think you’re going to find that it’s an even deeper relationship that can be formed.

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

Donna Serdula
Certainly, LinkedIn. I always visit my LinkedIn profile but my website is LinkedIn-Makeover.com, and that’s got tons of free tools that talks about our services. Everything I do is transparent so you can see our pricing, you can see our examples, you can see our portfolio, everything is there.

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

Donna Serdula
Yeah, I’m going to go back to what I said earlier. Definitely, I challenge all of you to really think about who you are, where you’re going, and look at that profile, and don’t just align it to where you are. Align it to where you want to go. Make it more future-oriented. Tell people. Maybe not just show but really talk about what you’ve done, where you’re going. And if you need help, there is my LinkedIn headline generator and, certainly, we’re here to help as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Donna, this has been a treat. Thank you so much and I wish you much luck in all of your connecting.

Donna Serdula
Thank you so much.