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Jan 15
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534: Moving from Top Performer to Excellent Leader with Ryan Hawk

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Ryan Hawk says: "Make sure your people feel the love."

Ryan Hawk shares how to transition from individual contributor to team leader.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why top performers often struggle as new managers
  2. What most managers fail to prepare for
  3. Powerful ways to build your team’s trust

About Ryan:

Ryan Hawk is a keynote speaker, author, advisor, and the host of The Learning Leader Show, a podcast with millions of listeners in more than 150 countries.  He is the author of Welcome To Management: How To Grow From Top Performer To Excellent Leader (McGraw-Hill, January 28, 2020).

A lifelong student of leadership, he rose to roles as a professional quarterback and VP of Sales at a multibillion-dollar company. Currently, as head of Brixey & Meyer’s leadership advisory practice, Ryan speaks regularly at Fortune 500 companies, works with teams and players in the NFL, NBA, and NCAA, and facilitates “Leadership Circles” that offers structured guidance and collaborative feedback to new and experienced leaders.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Ryan Hawk Interview Transcript

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

Ryan Hawk
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. Excited to be here with you, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting. And I want to hear, first of all, so you’ve got a cool sales career, doing great there. And, also, I’ve noticed on your podcast, you’ve had some impressive guests, some of whom kind of blew me off.

Ryan Hawk
Blew you off? Who blew you off?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I don’t want to name names but I might’ve gotten to it a little bit late, like, “Oh, you got a cool book coming out in two weeks.” It’s like, “Okay. Well, you should’ve talked to the publicist a month ago.” I think that might be part of it but I want to give you some credit. I think you’ve probably got some secret sauce over there. So, can you give us some pro tips, off the bat? I think you’ve got something to say about persistence and persuasion that is manifested in your sales career success as well as booking awesome guests on your podcast.

Ryan Hawk
Well, thank you. I think given that my first job after college, when I got done playing football, was on inside, so I was a telephonic sales professional where I was making 60, 70, 80 calls a day, a lot of the time people saying no, huge amounts of rejections, so you had to get creative. What I learned how to do was writing cold emails, which then I used that skill when reaching out to podcast guests.

This was especially hard at the beginning when I didn’t even have any type of platform or audience, so there was no reason for anybody to say yes. And so, just kind of this short formula that I would say I used with cold outreach, and this could work, I think, potentially, in other areas when it comes to selling is I like to name, in specifics, why I look up to that person, or why they impress me, or what I like about them, or the value that they’ve added to my life. So, there’s one quick kind of form of flattery but it has to be very specific and it needs to be honest.

Then I like to try to find some form of uncommon commonality, a way to connect us, me and that person. Then I will share some credibility, again, much harder at the beginning, much easier now, credibility of the show, perhaps some of the statistic that they may care about, about whom they’d be listening so it adds some of that from an influence perspective. They see the social proof. And then I will directly ask in bold for them to be on my show.

I also give them an out, “If now is not the right time. No worries. We can do it another time. Just let me know.” And so, I don’t end it with a hard close, do the opposite of that, in fact. And some guests, I will do that for three and a half years. And Jim Collins was one of those people, and I had multiple phone calls with his team, I sent countless emails, and, eventually, we got it to work.

Seth Godin, he’s kind of notorious for this, where if you ask him early on, he’ll say, “Come back to me after you have 50, 75 episodes where you’ve been doing it for a year.” He gave me that response when I asked him initially. And I emailed him exactly six months to the day at the exact minute of the email that he sent me because that’s what he asked, and said, “Seth, it’s been six months exactly. I now have, whatever, 58 shows, this many listeners in this many countries and Forbes wrote a story and blah, blah, blah. Are you ready?” He said, “I’m a man of my word. Of course.”

And so, there’s a variety and a lot of stories about, I think, just consistently not getting upset or frustrated when somebody blows you off or they say no, and just keep going. Just stay at it. Not being annoying but also never quitting when it comes to somebody saying no or ignoring you. I always believe, always, that no simply means not yet. And so, if you say no or you ignore me, that just means it just hasn’t happened yet. It’s going to, but it just hasn’t happened yet. I take that approach to, really, everything when it comes to sales as well as getting podcast guests.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. You know, I had a feeling that there was something to it, so that persistence. What do you think is roughly the appropriate cadence for follow-up?

Ryan Hawk
You mean like if they ignored you and when to email again?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Ryan Hawk
Yeah, I’ll usually put a little thing in my calendar for a month, so it’s not really quick and I’m trying not to be annoying. Maybe they forgot it, maybe they never even saw it, maybe they just quickly deleted it, whatever it may be. But I’ll keep to it and try to tweak it or change it. I know how this goes because I get these notes from publicists now, as you probably do as well, and they’re promoting their clients to come on your show, and they send one, and sometimes they’ll send them every single day, and that, for me, that’s not a good process for me to want to work with you long term. That publicist may be ruining their shot, not only for that client but all of their clients. So, you’d have to be careful and understand that delicate balance between being persistent and being annoying.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you maybe give us an example or two when it comes to an uncommon commonality and a sincere bit of flattery?

Ryan Hawk
Sure. So, one of my favorite writers is Adam Grant. He wrote Give and Take, he wrote Originals, he’s really smart. Adam Grant went to graduate school at the University of Michigan. I played a football game against the University of Michigan at their stadium while Adam was in school.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Ryan Hawk
So, I told him specifically why Give and Take how it had changed my life, it changed my view on the world that givers are going to be successful. So, I gave various specifics on what I learned about being a giver from his first book Give and Take. Then I told him, “You may have been in the stands and watched me score a touchdown in the south end zone at The Big House of the University of Michigan.” Then I said, “And here’s my podcast. I’d like for you to come on my show,” and then gave some of the social proof there, and he said yes. And so, that is one of the examples I do use. Now, that’s one of the better ones. I’m not going to lie, I don’t have that good of one for all of them.

Pete Mockaitis
You can’t play football everywhere.

Ryan Hawk
Yeah, but that is one. But I still had to dig, and do some work, and understand the timing, and look into it, right? So, my point is it does take some research, it takes some work, it takes some thought to, one, say specifically why that person’s work has impacted you, and then try to find something you have in common. It’s not always that tight or that good, but you could probably find something if you look hard enough.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. Well, thank you, Ryan. I’ve been curious about this for a while, and I think that’s helpful because many of us, we’ve got to do some cold outreach from time to time, we’ve got to persuade even though it’s not our…that’s like an appetizer, if you will, to the main dish.

Ryan Hawk
I wrote an article about this. I’m happy to send you the links so that you could look at it if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that.

Ryan Hawk
Yup, okay. Go ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s like an appetizer to the main entree of this conversation, which is about getting started in management. So, I’ve got so much to dig into here. So, maybe why don’t you open us up by sharing a compelling story that really conveys how this concept is important and overlooked when you’re making that leap from top performer to excellent leader?

Ryan Hawk
Well, the interesting aspect about this, so I come from my first job, again, was a telephonic sales professional making 60, 70 calls a day. And as I learned how to do that well and performed at high levels, like a lot of sales organizations, there are stack rankings. And what they do when they get an opening, typically, is they look at the stack rankings, and the top three or four people get the opportunity to interview for the management job.

Now, I understand why this happens, I get it. I’ve done this as a leader. However, really, the thought that just taking the top performer and saying, “Well, you’re going to be the manager,” it doesn’t really make any sense. In fact, in sports, if you take the very best of the best players, almost none of them make good coaches. The best coaches are like the backup quarterback, the backup point guard, the catcher in baseball. These are the people who have to use more of their intelligence than just pure sheer athleticism or sheer talent in the business world.

So, that’s one of the first issues, is that we don’t always choose the right people. But, in my case, I got lucky. I was one of the top performers and so they did give me an opportunity, and I was able to lean on some of my experience as a leader in the sports world. I played quarterback in college and a little bit after college, and so I leaned and used some of that to share why I would be a good leader. But then I get into the job, and I was not prepared really for any aspect of being a manager within corporate America. I haven’t been trained on anything. I wasn’t ready for any of it.

And the very first week in the job, Pete, I’m 27, I’m in this nice, big, cozy office, an expensive chair, Herman Miller, right? I’m looking out this beautiful window which I never had before because I was in a cubicle, and I turned around after gazing out my window, and there’s a 43-year old woman, who is now one of my direct reports, looking at me, she’s crying, she slowly walks in my office, she shuts the door, she’s kind of quivering in a way, and says, “Ryan, my husband cheated on me. He wants a divorce.” And record scratch, right, and I said in my head, “Why in the world are you telling me this? What are you doing?”

And in that moment, I realized I had no idea what it actually meant to be a manager in a business. As an individual contributor, I didn’t have to deal with any of that type of stuff, like real life, the psychology of people, emotional intelligence, all those parts of the job, I was ill-prepared to have those types of conversations. I thought I could go in and coach about, like, “Okay, here’s how I was able to perform at a high level.” But, at best, that’s what I could do, is maybe lead like a training session on one particular topic. But the whole scope of the job, I just wasn’t ready.  And so, that’s why I focus on this specific time in someone’s life because I realized that this is something I needed when I was making that leap and I didn’t have it.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, now we got to know how the story resolves. You can’t do that to us, Ryan. So, what did you say and what happened with the woman?

Ryan Hawk
Well, I would love to say that I handled it great. What I ended up doing was just trying to be a compassionate listener, which that is, I think, a basic human skill that you develop. As a quarterback in college, it is part of the job having one-on-one conversations with each of your teammates to develop trust, to show how much you care, right? As a quarterback, you have ten other people that are playing alongside you. You need those guys to be ready to go. You need them to believe in you. You need them to want to play hard alongside you.

And so, I did use some of that and was able to, I think, be a decent listener, not really offer much advice because, who am I, this young guy who doesn’t know anything, and she’s lived…I’m in grade school when she’s starting her career essentially. I don’t know anything, and so I tried to listen. I remember I called my dad immediately after that conversation where I kind of fumbled around, listened, but didn’t do a whole lot, and I said, “Why would this happen? Who would do this?” And he said, “Dude, welcome to management. Like, that is part of the gig. That is, in fact, a big part of the job. And, unfortunately, if you decide to keep doing this long enough, you’ll have this exact conversation multiple times throughout your career and it’s very sad.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the divorce one? Yeah, that is sad.

Ryan Hawk
Yes. “It’s sad, it’s not fun, but it’s life, and that’s part of the deal. So, learn from this and let’s talk about it.” And so, the first one I probably did not handle very well, and he was right, it did happen more than once again in that role, and it was crushing. And I mean, just soul-crushing each time like real life happened to people. But, as a leader, that’s part of the deal, that you raise your hand to be responsible to serve and help other people, and that’s part of the job is to help people in those moments that are toughest for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, okay. So, I’m totally convinced that, yes, that’s part of the job and, often, your individual contributor skills aren’t going to get you there in terms of being there for people and providing what they need to really flourish in their roles. So, tell us, you’ve done a lot of research here in the realm of performers becoming excellent leaders, have you made any particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries about how professionals can do that well?

Ryan Hawk
I think, first, there’s kind of a few steps, and all of these I did not do well initially, but did better after getting help from other people, and that’s actually part of the first step. When you’re making this transition, it is vital to create your own personal board of advisors, your own small group of people that have been there before, that you really trust, that are going to give you honest real feedback that you can go to and ask questions. They’re not going to judge you, they’re not going to think less of you, they’re going to be there to help you. So, creating your own little personal board of advisors is critical, I think, to be awesome at your job, especially awesome at this job where you don’t really fully know what you’re getting yourself into. So, think about that part of the job first is creating that for yourself.

Second, my dad also told me early on, and he’s still living a life of excellence and, certainly, led in corporate America for 30 plus years, and said, “Think about who is going to be on your team, who will you hire, who will you fire, and get very clear on that. Because if you get that part right, you’ll become rich and famous within this industry. If you get that part wrong, you will be poor and unemployed. Do not mess around with this. Understand and get it right.”

And so, I think, first, was I did a little project where I tried to deconstruct and understand what excellence actually was on my team and across the business, doing my own research on, “Okay, I see these people are the highest performers. Now, let’s understand why. What are their behaviors? What’s their makeup? What are the qualities that those people have? What are they like? What are their personalities like?”

I did my best to compile a bunch of my own personal research so that I can understand, “Okay, I’m looking for these specific qualities. We need somebody who knows how to handle adversity. We need some aggression. We want someone who’s thoughtful. We want a good interviewer.” Really listed out the important qualities and then developed questions to ask in the interview process to help uncover if our candidates possessed the qualities that we wanted.

And that I did not get immediately but after making some hiring mistakes and after not really having a strategy or a plan, really what happened when I got promoted is another manager just forwarded me this list of 25 questions. Now, they were just interview questions. They didn’t really make any sense. They were just decent interview questions to ask but I didn’t really know why I was asking them, or what I was looking for, or what I was trying to do. So, over time, when I got some good feedback and advice, I started having more of a strategy on the who of my team, and understanding how to find it. And I would say that was a critical turning point for me to start building an excellent-caliber team was when I got more clarity on that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m so intrigued there now. I’m certain there will be different behaviors, traits, makeups, for individuals who can excel in different kinds of roles so there’s going to be some natural diversity there. But I’m thinking there’s also going to be some universals in terms of, “This is good stuff for a professional no matter what the industry, what the functions.” What the function? So, I would love to get your take on what are some of those universals you identified and how do you go about hiring people who’ve got that going on?

Ryan Hawk
Yeah, so a great question. I love it. I think there certainly are some universals of people. It’s funny, I was speaking with a friend of ours. My wife and I went on a double date with close friends, and we’re asking about how they met, and we told our story how we met. And Ashley, the wife of one of my good friends, she said, “Well, I made a list of non-negotiables. Meaning he had to have these few things.” I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting that you made that list.”

And so, I think that’s like kind of what we need to do as leaders is make our little list of, I don’t know if that has to be non-negotiables, but I would want them to have some qualities that we care about, we really like. And so, for me, a few of the areas that I really try that I want to be surrounded by are people that are intellectually curious. So, people who realize that they certainly don’t have it even close to figure it out, they’re trying to grow, learn, right? These people typically are well-read. They’re interesting people. Because they’re so curious, they’re willing to chase something down and go after it. I like those types of people.

My dad taught me the power of optimism. He’s the most optimistic guy I ever met. In fact, my wife and him are probably tied for first place there. I was so attracted to that growing up that I ended up marrying somebody who had that same outlook on life. I think that’s very useful and helpful to be around. That also creates great energy in the building or in the space. A good sense of optimism, believing that things will go well, I think is helpful.

I like, also, people who are the combination of confident yet humble at the same time, and understanding how to balance between those two, where they believe in themselves, they’re going to be able to aggressively pursue what they’re going after, but they’re also not always using the word “I.” They don’t think they have it all figured out. They know they need the help of other people. And humble people typically are more coachable. And I think being coachable is helpful.

And that’s why it’s funny. I ended up hiring a number of people who had military backgrounds as well as people who have played on teams, sports teams, because they’ve been coached and they know how to work in an environment when they need to collaborate with others. So, those are a few.

One bonus that I would say that I look for and I test that I love but it’s not always a mandatory is being a great writer. I think someone who can clearly put their thoughts on paper eloquently, straightforward, I think, is a huge plus, and it’s a skill we all should work on developing. So, I usually would ask people to send me sample proposals, or emails that they’ve written, or even blogposts if they publish. I ask to see that because that can be a huge plus if people had developed those skills.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that is a nice lineup there and some good ways to check for that. So, let’s say beyond the realm of hiring, let’s say you have entered management and welcomed to it, what would you say is the number one or two or three things that people just fail to prepare for? It’s like, “Oops, surprise.” So, you got one when you heard some personal issues, we got a divorce on the horizon. What are some other things that folks fail to prepare for and what should we do instead?

Ryan Hawk
So, the word “meeting” gets a bad rap because we’ve all sat through horrible meetings, right? And what happens when you’re a manager is you probably just follow the meeting structure of the person you work for. And so, if that person runs bad meetings, now you then go on to run bad meetings. That’s unfortunate. And as the leader of a team, you now are solely responsible for the success or failure of your meetings.

Meetings are imperative. Meetings are important. It’s where communication takes place. And that’s exactly what I did though when I became a manager. I literally took the agenda, the same agenda was used for every meeting, which is another conversation, another issue, but the same agenda was used for every meeting, and I just copied it, and just did that, and just kind of went through the motions of what the Monday morning meeting look like, and I started to become the manager who had bad meetings. And it’s critical. I just had a conversation with the great Patrick Lencioni about this who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and a bunch of other good books, The Advantage. And this is a big part of our conversation because that’s where the bulk of in-person dialogue happens, and it’s critical that you get it right.

And so, I think you just need to be very thoughtful about your intentions, the purpose of the meeting, what you’re working to get out of it, making sure you send each person the necessary documents leading up to the meeting to make sure they’re prepared to be productive in the meeting, not after the meeting, but in the meeting that happens. And then, afterwards, you, as the leader, writing your discussion summary of what was learned, and then who is responsible for specific actions, and what will be taken, and when they’ll get finished by. All of that is a big part that, as a leader, I didn’t do any of it when I was getting started. I had to learn the hard way by being yet another manager who ran bad meetings till he eventually learned a better way. And that took some time and, certainly, mistakes. And, again, that’s why the book is written, is to help people not make the same mistakes that I did.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. And so, we’ll avoid doing those things and get real clear on the meetings and the agendas and what we need to cover to be excellent. Well, so, let’s say, in particular, like I think that scenario you mentioned in terms of when you are managing someone who is older and more experienced than you, how do you navigate that?

Ryan Hawk
I think it’s really hard. Part of earning respect though, I think the ways that I try to earn respect is to show people, regardless of my age or their age, that I’m going to be deliberate about working on my skill development on a daily basis so they know that I’m the type of person who’s going to try to improve. I, also, will want to lean on them and ask them about, perhaps, if they have more life reps than me, they have more experience than me, then let’s tap into some of that. Let’s see where we can, we all as a team can benefit from that.

So, I’ve had people who are as old as my grandparents working for me. They obviously have some experience that we would be fools not to listen to. And I think, as a leader, to be secure in yourself enough to say, “Hey, we’d like you to take the lead on this specific meeting or this specific training session. I want to tap into some of your knowledge and wisdom that you’ve gleaned over the years.” Don’t make them feel any type of being left out just because you’re so much younger. So, I really like to lean on people who have more experience than me, figuring out where their kind of zone of genius is, and then let’s empower them to share that with the team so they have a sense of ownership within our group as opposed to maybe a weird or odd sense that they’re reporting to somebody who’s half their age.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I dig that. And then when it comes to just sort of the regular communication and delegation, sort of day in, day out, taking care of responsibilities, activities, tasks, any pro tips on what to do versus not do in your new management role?

Ryan Hawk
Well, it is natural, especially if you’re a top performer, in my world working in sales, it is very natural to say, “Do it exactly like me.” In fact, I got bad advice from someone who had not gotten promoted yet, he said, “You just need to try to hire 15 people that are exactly like you.” Literally, I was told this. And I was like, “Yeah, good point. Because if I had 15 me, they would just all crush the number and we’re good to go.” And it was such a mistake obviously. I didn’t really take the advice, but I did listen and think peculiarly for a second, “Hmm, is that the right move?” Obviously, it’s not. Diversity of thought is extremely valuable. There’s an immense amount of science to back all that up.

But thinking though that everybody should act just like you since you were successful is a big mistake. Everybody has their own style, their own personality, their own way. Your job is to coach and help unleash their power within them. Some of them don’t even fully realize what that is and so it’s on you to ask really great questions to learn about each of your people as individuals, to understand what they care about, to understand why they’re there. I had this exercise called a getting-to-know-you document. I give them this get-to-know-you document. I had about 25 questions. Again, I have a post on this, I can give it to you.

Twenty-five questions for me to get to know them as a person, what they’re about, what they like, what they don’t, working styles, kind of a user manual type. There’s a section of that for it so I understand how to best work with them. We both fill that out. We then have a long-form conversation about that so I really get to know them best. And then, at their specific areas where they really excel or it’s a strength, maybe they’re a person that we can delegate some sort of work to based on what we’ve learned.

But you’ve got to do the hard work upfront to deeply learn and care about each person as an individual because, as you know, nobody will care how much you know or what you know until they care that you really care about them as a person. And so, that’s the job of the leader to take the lead on making that happen from the very beginning with, again, a number of different exercises. But getting to know them is certainly one that I’ve implemented, and this seems to have worked pretty well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly linked to those questions, could you give us a teaser, a question or two, that often seems to result in some handy insight?

Ryan Hawk
So, I’ll share some basic ones and maybe some sneaky ones here. So, I will ask them the name of their spouse and kids if they’re married and have kids, and their address. And here’s why. If you happen to have somebody who is a top performer and you really want to make them feel the love, an advice my dad gave me, “Make sure your people feel the love,” and they’re doing really well, and, let’s say, they’re also helping other people. Like, their actions are, they’re really good. They’re people that you want to make sure that they feel the love. I would send a handwritten note to their spouse and kids, along with it I would usually send some cookies, and on the get-to-know-you document, I’m finding out not only the interests of that person but the interests of their family.

And so, in one case, I remember, it was a specific video game that the kids had wanted, and so I bought the video game, cookies, wrote a handwritten note to this gentleman’s wife and their kids, saying, “Your dad, John, is absolutely crushing it. He’s also helping others while at work, helping them be successful in addition to him being successful. I’m so grateful that he’s on our team. Because of him, we are much better off. You should be so proud of your dad. In fact, why don’t you eat some cookies and play this video game, and say thank you to your dad for working so hard.”

And one of the things I found is when you love on the people who your people love, right, so kids and spouses of them, there may be no better gift. I’m a dad, I want my kids to think I’m cool or that I work hard so there may be no better gift, and it shows that you’re thoughtful. So, those questions were put on that initial get-to-know-you document so I understood and knew his kid’s name, I didn’t have to ask for, I didn’t have to ask him for his address, so it was a complete shock and surprise when these things show up, they’re personalized, sent to the right address, and they actually make sense. They’re not just a fruit basket. They’re specific for that person. It can go a long way.

And I developed real relationships with these people that worked on my teams, and some of them I haven’t worked with in more than five years and we’re still friends to this day because we both took an interest in developing a real relationship and caring about one another. And that then created the environment where people wanted to come to work, and excel, and perform at excellent levels consistently because they knew that their leader cared about them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is an excellent story and I’m all about it. Thank you. You make reference to, also, having an operating framework. What do you mean by that and why should we have one and how do we make one?

Ryan Hawk
So, over the course of these 350 interviews on my podcast The Learning Leader show, I noticed that people kept using the word framework or standard operating procedures for themselves for how they behave, for their actions, for how they made choices, and I started thinking. I remember I was talking to Ryan Caldbeck, a CEO on Silicon Valley, and he was talking a lot about these frameworks, and I was a little bit embarrassed because I don’t even understand what he’s talking about, I don’t have a framework for how I behave or how I make decisions. So, right after that conversation, I wrote down, “What are the optimal ways for me to create a great day? What are the ways for me to think about how I make decisions, how I act, how I behave?” And so, that’s why I created my framework, and I encourage others too. And mine are simply four parts. This would equate to a really good day for me. Four parts.

The first part of that is that I have an intake engine. I’m going to be a consumer of knowledge, of information, so I’m going to read, I’m going to have long-form conversations on my podcast, watch TED Talks, listen to podcasts myself, right? Intake engine, I’m going to take in information to learn. Second, I’m going to experiment with what I’ve learned. You can’t just be a learner. You have to be a doer. You’ve got to put it into practice. So, second, I’m going to experiment with what I’ve learned.

Third, I’m going to take a step back, reflect, and analyze what I’ve learned and what I’ve experimented with, what works, what doesn’t, what I’m going to go keep doing, and what I’m going to stop doing. So, I’m regularly adding to what I do on a daily basis. And then, fourth, and really important, I found the best mechanism for learning is teaching.

And so, when I go out and teach what I believe to others, or what I’ve learned to others, whether it be in the form of  a keynote speech, writing a book, running leadership circles, whatever it is that I do, as I’m preparing for that time on stage, or that time with somebody else to help them, I’m going to get very clear on what I know, on what I think, on what I believe, and that process of preparing for the big moment is when so much learning happens.

And so, when you regularly put yourself in the position to be a teacher, you’ll learn as a byproduct of teaching. And that’s why you find so many really intelligent professors because they constantly have to get ready to stand up in front of a group of students and teach, and so you’re going to learn so much. So, for me, that is my framework, the four parts of it, that had been meaningful. And when I really distilled it and thought about it, it’s been extremely helpful as I’ve progressed in this world of leadership to try to help other people, is to have my own sort of framework.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. Tell me, Ryan, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ryan Hawk
Man, hey, I’ll take it wherever you want. I feel like I’m just trying to answer. You ask great questions so keep firing away.

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Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. Well, let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ryan Hawk
My dad told me when I was young, he goes, “If you choose to do anything of significance in your life,” and this was relating to sports, for my brother and I at the time, “If you choose to do anything of significance, people are going to start talking and writing about you. Never get too high or too low based on what they say. If you don’t want people to talk about you or write about you, then don’t do anything.”

And I thought that was a really meaningful quote to us, especially in our formative years when my brother AJ and I were having some success in the football field, that it was a good reminder that, “Don’t think you’re too great just because you’ve had a good game and they put you on the front page of the paper.” And, subsequently, it’s not as bad as you think when you’ve played poorly or you’ve done something not as well. Stay composed. Have some moxie. And that has helped me in the business world as well because things are not always going to go well, and it’s how you choose to respond in those moments that can be very impactful, and so I remember that from my dad, and I’ve never forgotten it.

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

Ryan Hawk
I think one of the people I’m fascinated by is David Goggins.

Ryan Hawk
He wrote a book called Can’t Hurt Me. And I’m going to have David on in the future so I’ve been doing a lot of research on him. But he talks about the power of physical activity and how that is so helpful mentally. And I’m a big believer in this, I’m a big workout guy too, so maybe I’m choosing this out of selfish reasons. But he believes in developing and building mental calluses and those mental calluses can be built up through hard physical exertion, like pushing your body further than you think it could go, and he cites a lot of science to back all this up. But, really, it’s not necessarily about just being a workout theme. It’s about regularly putting yourself in challenging positions to understand the level that you can get to mentally to be able to push through difficult moments.

And I think the use of doing that through exercise, for me, is very attractive, and I’ve implemented that. And I think, for leaders, you may be saying, “Well, do I really need to go workout?” You certainly don’t have to do it that way, but I believe it is a great mechanism to understand how far to push yourself through challenging moments.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Ryan Hawk
It’s like asking your favorite kid. I’m going to go with The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. I live in Dayton, Ohio, the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop right down the street here in Dayton, Ohio. I think that book is beautifully written and the story is incredibly inspiring. And if you haven’t read it, you just heard about the Wright Brothers in school, there are so much to learn about those guys, including just how so many others were supported more than them, both in moral support and financially, both in the States and abroad, and yet these guys were willing to put in the work day after day consistently to build the first ever flying machine. It’s a really inspiring story, and I read it and re-read it regularly.

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

Ryan Hawk
Actually, this may be weird but I’m almost always in preparation mode for a podcast guest, and a lot of the podcast guests have written books. And so, I would say one of the biggest tools for me that I’m always in is the Kindle app on my iPad. I’m regularly using it to highlight, and then I take notes. I also then transfer my notes usually into some form of a Google Doc so I have that everywhere I go. And then I always print it out and handwrite my notes leading up to a podcast episode because there’s something to me about the handwritten form that it really ingrains the information in my mind. So, those are a few tools that help me, I think, do my job well.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Ryan Hawk
Every morning when I wake up, I have a wife and we’re raising five daughters, and so it is a chaotic household a lot, so I have to create space where I could be by myself and, usually, that is very early in the morning. So, my favorite habit is waking up before everyone in my home does, and I love to stretch. I stretch my body, and then try to stretch my mind through reading and then writing early in the morning. And then I push myself pretty hard in the gym every morning before I come home and have breakfast with my family. So, that, I would say, is a habit and a routine that I’ve gotten into over the past few years that’s been very helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that in your talks, etc., that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you and retweet it often?

Ryan Hawk
We’ve talked about some of them already, but I would say just remember the importance of your “who” and ask yourself who is your who. And there’s really three groupings of the people in your life that you should think about surrounding yourself with. Who are those people who are ahead of you, people who have done what you want to do? These are the mentors you look up to, maybe some bosses. Some of them are virtual mentors because you’ve just seen them online, you love what they do, and you follow them. So, who’s in front of you?

Who’s beside you? Who are those people you can walk along this challenging path? You can help one another out, you’re rooting for each other’s success. You’re not judging each other. You can share difficult moments and help one another. And then who are those people that you are helping? Who’s behind you? Who are you mentoring? Who looks up to you? Who’s asking for your advice? And how are you pouring into them to help them get better? I think it’s very critical to remember who is your who. And if it’s not clearly defined, take out a piece of paper and a pen, write that down, and then rate those relationships.

Level five relationships, at least on this grading scale, are those people who you have regularly-scheduled meetings on the calendar, and you schedule the next meeting while the current meeting is taking place so you know what’s going to happen. That’s a level five. Level one is someone that you’d like to talk to but maybe haven’t yet, and everything else is in between. But rate those relationships and be very intentional about making sure your who is clear and it makes sense for you and what you want to do.

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

Ryan Hawk
LearningLeader.com. Everything is there, website, you could get my book, you can listen to podcasts. And if you happen to be listening on your phone, and it’s easier, just text the word “learners” to 44222.

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

Ryan Hawk
Read books, man. Read books. I remember, when I read Good to Great by Jim Collins and the impact it had in my life, because not only did it change my viewpoint on what it meant to lead in business, it made me a more curious person, and it also made me want to read other books. So, reading begets reading. I just think I’ve never met somebody who’s well-read who’s not very interesting. And it’s that type of person we want to be. I like surrounding myself with really interesting thoughtful people. And, again, I’ve never met somebody who’s constantly reading book who isn’t the type of person who I want to spend time around, who isn’t very interesting. So, that would be my piece, is to read books.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ryan, this has been a lot fun. I wish you lots of luck in all of your adventures, and keep it up.

Ryan Hawk
Thank you so much, Pete. Man, love being on your show with you.

Dec 23
0

528: Building High-Performing Teams through Psychological Safety with Aaron Levy

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Aaron Levy says: "The right type of leader you can be is actually just being yourself."

Aaron Levy discusses how to encourage your team to give and receive more honest feedback.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The deciding factor of high-performing teams
  2. How to make feedback less intimidating
  3. Four ground rules that allow teams to thrive

About Aaron:

Aaron is the Founder and CEO of Raise The Bar, a firm focused on helping companies address the problem of millennial turnover.

Aaron is an ICF Associate Certified Coach, a Thrive Global contributor, an 1871 mentor, the Co-Director of Startup Grind Chicago and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. He has educated, coached, and consulted over 5,500 business leaders, helping them to define goals, create action plans, and achieve sustained success.

Aaron is on a mission to transform the manager role – by empowering each manager with the tools, skills, and training to be leaders of people who unlock the potential of their team.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Aaron Levy Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Aaron, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Aaron Levy
Thanks for having me on for a second time, Pete. I’m really happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m happy to have you. And another fun fact we learned about you is you take some cold-water plunges in the wintertime. What is the story here?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, it’s been the last couple of years. My coach for his 60th birthday said, “For my birthday, you’re going to come plunge with me in the lake.” And I swim with him probably May through August, September, early October. He said, “We’re going to go for a plunge in November-December.” I said, “What?” He said, “It’s for my birthday.” I said, “Okay. You only turn 60 once so we’ll do it.”

And we got in, and we plunged, and it became one of those things that is there’s not really much better way to start the day than plunging into Lake Michigan and getting this just cold but also really refreshing feeling. So, I try and do it a couple of times a week and go in for a couple of minutes so I don’t get hypothermic, and it’s just a really nice refreshing way to start the day.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny you used the word nice because it sounds like torture to me. Explain.

Aaron Levy
Well, it is a little bit painful and it’s a mental challenge, and I think that, also, what’s interesting about it, as someone who does triathlons and racing, that whole sport is a mental challenge, and so you kind of love once you get into the water, it’s all leading up to it, but then once you’re in and you’re shoulder deep in water, everything slows down, and you can slow down your heart rate and your breathing. You just calm down. And you don’t want too calm in there for too long but you definitely calm down for a minute or two. It’s the leadup that’s much more crazy, I think, than the actual plunge.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I was going to say, are you sure that sensation isn’t you dying?

Aaron Levy
No, I’m not entirely sure it’s not me dying. We’ve done it enough times where we’d play with that, like, “Okay, at two and a half minutes at this temperature, that’s too much time.” Like, your whole body chatters for 30 minutes afterwards, “Okay, I was in there a little too long.” So, we learned to figure that out on our own.

But it’s just one of those things that’s really refreshing. And people ask me, “Well, what’s the science behind it?” And I say, “You know, the science is hit and miss. There’s cryotherapy, professional athletes going in ice baths after sporting events or races, and so it’s kind of following along that path. It’s very similar to that, but I’m not going to claim I do this for science. The reason I do it because it’s exhilarating, it’s fun, and it’s refreshing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing and it’s come up before, so thanks for indulging us there. I want to say congrats. You have completed your book Open, Honest, and Direct: A Guide to Unlocking Your Teams Potential, so that’s cool. I think I want to go deep on a particular vein of it, but maybe you could give us sort of like the broad zoomed-out message, sort of what’s the main thesis of this opus here.

Aaron Levy
Yeah, the main thesis is that it takes work to lead people, and we are usually promoted into leadership roles because we’re good at doing what we’re doing, not because we’re good at leading people. And so, the path that this book takes is actually it takes all the steps we work with leaders on, is, “What does it take to be an open, honest, and direct leader? How do you listen? How do you ask powerful questions? How do you create this base for psychological safety to occur? And how do you ultimately realize…?”

I think one of the hardest messages of the book to realize is that feedback is a gift, and the act of giving it, even in a critical conversation, or sharing something that just might not feel good to share because you might be worried about hurting somebody else’s feelings, actually might be the best thing that that person needs or you and your team need, or all of the above need.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, there’s lots to that and it certainly resonates and rings true. So, I want to talk in-depth about psychological safety, which is a theme that’s in the book and in your work. And so, first, how about, just so we’re all on the same page, can you define that term for us and why does it matter?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, the way I think about it when we think about psychological safety is it’s the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up, raising questions, concerns, or mistakes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Aaron Levy
I can give you more of an analogy though if that helps as another way to think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we’ll take it.

Aaron Levy
So, the way I tend to think about it is imagine you’re walking through, you know, you’re trying to not be sure who you can say what to. Like, this person, if you say that to, they might blow up at you. This person you say that to, they’re going to respond to it in a different way. This person is going to be passive-aggressive, and it’s like you’re walking through a field where there’s a series of landmines all around you and you’re not quite sure where those landmines are.

And so, you’re walking through the field slowly, unsure of what you say, and if you do it the wrong way, or if you say it with this tone, or if you email it in that way, that you’re going to get punished, or humiliated, or put down. And it’s just not hyper-efficient. It’s actually the opposite of efficiency because you’re slowly walking through that field as opposed to, in business, what we really want to be doing is moving at a rapid pace together towards the same direction.

And so, the lack of psychological safety is like you’re walking through a series of landmines.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that is a nice, well, maybe not nice, it’s a clear and illustrative metaphor, maybe kind of a spooky one as you really put yourself in the position. And so, I hear you that the belief that you’re not going to be ridiculed, etc., that sounds like a pleasant thing to be going on. But there’s really some excellent science behind psychological safety and the results that that unlocks for teams. So, can you refresh us on that as well?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about this came when I started to look at Google’s Project Aristotle. And when you look at Google’s Project Aristotle, it’s really a study where Google said, “Hey, we want to figure out what are the key ingredients for a high-performing team, what makes teams perform well.”

And their initial hypothesis was, “Well, it’s the right mix of people with this personality style and that personality style. We have the right mix of introverts and extroverts. We have the right mix of talent.” They thought that was the case. But when they did their research and they looked at teams within Google, but they also looked at meta analyses of other studies on teams, what they found was their hypothesis was totally wrong.

And two of the most important factors to drive high-performing teams had nothing to do with the people on the teams at all. Initially, I was baffled, and then after I had a chance to kind of absorb that and think about that concept, the performance of a team has nothing to do with the people on the team at all. The cool thing about that is that means that you, as a leader of a team, actually have the opportunity to impact the performance of any team that you’re working on immediately.

And the two factors that show up and came out of this Google Project Aristotle was the need for psychological safety in the workplace and also clarity. Both of those things combined, “Clarity on where we’re going, how we’re working together, and safety, and I feel comfortable in my ability to do what I need to do to work.” And that might mean asking a question without thinking it’s a stupid question, that might mean challenging my boss because we need to challenge his idea and not just accept the norms. That’s actually what drives team performance.

So, it’s not really a thing that we talk about in our leadership training, or with our clients, or in any of our work as a way to just feel good. The reason we talk about psychological safety is because it is one of the top factors which drives team performance and better outcomes within a business.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, it’s really interesting how I can really think about all kinds of conversations where there’s really some interrelationship there, which means psychological safety and clarity, because you might be afraid you’re going to be ridiculed and, thusly, you don’t ask the clarifying questions necessary to arrive at your clarity. And, in reverse, it’s like if you don’t feel clear about where you’re going, you’re feeling kind of anxious and edgy, like, “I hope this is maybe the right thing,” like the whole time that you’re engaging in conversation and hunker down and doing your work solo.

Aaron Levy
The balance and the play between the two are so, so important. And I say any great leader, their role is to provide context and clarity. Clarity on where we’re going, what we’re doing, how we’re going. And context as to why we’re doing it. But the underlying thing in that is, all along that way, people need to feel safe.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then let’s get into it. The psychological safety, how is it earned and gained and built? And how is it lost in terms of sort of real-life day-to-day exchanges, interactions?

Aaron Levy
Yeah. At the highest level, it is gained and lost through consistency. So, if you are not consistent in the way you show up, Pete, as a person with your family, with other people, they won’t know what to expect from you and, thus, psychological safety is lost. However, if you’re consistent in the way you show up, you are setting yourself up to say, “I know if I do this, I’m going to get this response.”

So, what you’re doing is you’re setting yourself up for psychological safety. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to guarantee you’d give it if you’re consistently yelling at people when they ask you a question. That’s not psychological safety, but it’s consistency in a few things. And so, I share consistency at the start because that’s probably the most important thing to remember. It’s not, “I just try, I’m going to share a couple of things that we talk about doing.” But it’s not trying to do one of those things or two of those things once in a while and seeing how it works. Psychological safety is created over a long period of time where you’re consistent in the actions that you do.

And so, one specific example of that is when you give feedback in person, right? And when I say in person, I don’t mean literally it has to be face-to-face with the other person. It could be over the phone or via a video chat. What I really mean is not giving feedback via Slack, via Instant Message, or text message, or email because it’s just not the highest fidelity mode of communication.

The best example I think about is, it’s like if you ever have that text message where you’re texting with somebody, and then you feel like they might be frustrated, and the text bubble comes up, and it seems like they’re about to text too but then it goes away?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Aaron Levy
And that’s the worst. “What’s happening is? Is he mad at me?” and then you go into the office and it’s your boss. So, you’re looking for your boss, and he walks in, and he walks right by you, you’re like, “Wait. He’s definitely mad at me. I’m in trouble. I did something wrong. I must’ve said something wrong in his email. What’s going on?” You build this whole story.

Little did you know, as you’re building that whole story, is you’re reading this feedback via text message, which isn’t a high-fidelity mode of communication, you’re building a story that he or she is mad at you for something that happened in the text message. But, really, they were just going from one meeting to another, and in between meetings, they really had to go to the bathroom, so they don’t even see you. They just walk straight to the bathroom.

And when we don’t give feedback in person, over the phone, or via a video chat, we’re losing that level of understanding the situation and we build a story around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, this reminds me. This has come up once before on the show. If you’ve seen the Key & Peele text message confusion sketch, it is priceless. It’s not quite safe at work because of the language, but it’s hilarious and illustrates that point, how we can sort of read things in and misinterpret, and when folks truly have completely different intentions and things that they’re trying to communicate there. Okay, that’s one practice then, is offering feedback in a live, real-time environment.

Aaron Levy
Here’s the tip around that, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Aaron Levy
If an email or a text message is taking you more than five minutes to craft, like you’re typing it and then you delete because you’re like, “Oh, that sound passive-aggressive.” Typing it in again, deleting, you’re not really sure how to respond? Don’t send the email. It’s called the 5-minute rule. Just pick up the phone and call the person, or walk over their desk.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And what I love about that, I guess the nuance to that 5-minute rule is it’s not so much you have a lot of content to share. I guess if that’s the case, I’d recommend Loom. I love that screen recording stuff. They need to sponsor the show one day. Anyway, I love Loom for screen recording instant videos, so sharp. But it’s taking you more than five minutes not because there’s a lot of in-depth content but because there’s some emotional stuff there, “Ooh, I don’t know if that’s going to land this way. Hmm.” Like, those are the things that are making it get stretched out.

Aaron Levy
And that emotional stuff isn’t going to be conveyed well via email.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Aaron Levy
So, don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you. I’m with you. Okay, so we got the sharing. That’s one consistent action you recommend for building the psychological safety is sharing those feedback points in real-time live environments, in person or in Skype or something, or phone. What are some of the other key consistent things that make all the difference in building up psychological safety?

Aaron Levy
Avoid using absolutes like “always,” “never,” “can’t,” “won’t,” “don’t.” The truth is when you use absolutes like that, it just adds a layer of judgment to a situation that likely isn’t true and will most often lead to someone else being defensive on the good side or the bad side, “Pete, you’re always late.” You might look at me and say, “Aaron, I wasn’t late for this meeting and I wasn’t late for last meeting.” And I’d have to say, “Oh, you’re right. Pete, three meetings this week that you’re a part of, you were late.” That you can’t deny, but always late? That’s just probably not true.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’m right with you there. And so, it’s also a bit more honest. I’m thinking about the book Nonviolent Communication now.

Aaron Levy
Oh, amazing book.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of just it’s an observation as opposed to judgment, and there’s a huge distinction and ways that you can sort of drift on over into the judgment territory and be evaluative in use of one of those absolutes. It’s so funny, it’s tempting to use an absolute about absolutes, “Never use absolutes.” Oh, no, I just used an absolute.

Aaron Levy
I was about to say every time. Most of the time when I deliver this and share this with leaders, in my head I’m having this dialogue of, “Watch out for the absolutes, watch out for the absolutes. They’re going to catch you in an absolute.” Because it’s such a big part of our language and the way in which we communicate, we communicate through themes and stories that we see on TV and in the world, and we communicate through absolutes. And both of those actually limit the truth of what we’re trying to say.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Well, keep it coming. Keep it coming, Aaron. What else, career practices?

Aaron Levy
What else? One of my favorites is simply be specific. Share what actions worked or didn’t work when you’re giving someone feedback. So, don’t share who they are or who they aren’t, right? “You need to care more.” “What do you mean I need to care more? What tells you that I’m not caring enough?” And when we break this down with leaders as they start to share this in our trainings, and they say, “Well, what tells me that they don’t care is the last email that they sent to a client had three spelling errors in it.” Okay. So, instead of telling your employee to care more, which has a lot of judgment, has a lot of weight, just tell them that what you expect of them is to send client emails without grammatical errors in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that because, well, one it’s just very specific and actionable, and you can run with that and be enriched as a professional by hearing and adapting to that feedback. I would love to get your pro take on it in terms of do you want to share the context associated with the why behind that? Because, in a way, that might sound evaluative and judge-y.

So, I would say, “Hey, please make sure that you double-check your email so that you don’t have these sorts of typos go out. I noticed in this email these three typos. And my concern is that can create the impression that we are sloppy, or inattentive to detail, or rushing over on our side.” So, in a way, I’m giving you some context and some why behind my request. In another way, it sounds like I might be into evaluation, judging territory that they might trigger defensiveness. What’s your take?

Aaron Levy
“Well, so you did it twice unknowingly, so I’m going to give you a little bit of a reframe, take it or leave it. One of the things that you did, even at the start without noticing likely, was I want you to double-check your emails.” That’s assuming that whoever sent that email didn’t double or triple, quadruple-check it. I’m someone who can triple-check an email and still have plenty of grammatical errors in it. And so, I could look at that and hear what you say just from the start, and be like, “Well, I did.”

So, here’s a reframe of how to say it, “The expectation is, when you have a client email that goes out, it has zero grammatical errors. The impact of having grammatical errors is they think small errors means we have errors in other things that we do and it decreases our chance of working with them again.”

So, your ask was, “Hey, can I share this specific feedback and can I give a little bit of the impact of this specific impact?” Yes, you can totally give the impact of this specific feedback. I would just make it as insular as possible. What I mean by that is, as you and the experience focus, as opposed to saying, “When you do that, everybody on the team gets pissed at you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Aaron Levy
“When you send that email, the impact is I don’t trust that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do,” right? That is my judgment and evaluation, but, hey, I asked you to do something and send an email on time or send an email with no errors, and you sent an email late with errors. Now, I don’t trust that you can do what you say you’re going to do, as opposed to the rest of the team was pissed off at you. Because that is throwing too much judgment out there to the group.

And I know this sounds like nitty-gritty if you’re listening to it. As much as you can think of, “How can I just be specific about what actually didn’t work and the honest impact of it?” The honest impact is, “We’re worried that we might lose a client when we send them work like this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Yeah, I like that in terms of it’s clear, it’s like, “This is the expectation for these underlying reasons or philosophies,” and then it gets more personal in terms of, let’s take a look at this example email, and let’s hear that part of the conversation.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. And so, sometimes with feedback, you don’t need to give the impact because they get it. it’s just especially when you do it in the moment or timely. It doesn’t need to be spur of the moment but it should be within one to three days. That’s one of the other things that’s really important. If you give feedback a week, two, three, six weeks, a month later, the person might not even remember what it was about, “What email are you talking about? What did I say in that client call? What did I do in that meeting? I didn’t even notice.”

When you give it in the moment, or within a couple of days, people are able to observe, understand what they did, and change it. So, if someone on your team is a salesperson, and they made a mistake in a sales call, and you wait two weeks to tell them about the mistake, how many sales calls are they going on making the same mistake over and over and over again?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, and it just doesn’t feel so great. I’m thinking about reviews in particular. It’s like surprises on the review that might happen nearly a year after the fact, it’s like, “What?”

Aaron Levy
Here’s the analogy I play with that just because it’s almost stupid-funny when you think about it. Think about Tom Brady and the Patriots, and I say Tom Brady not because I like Tom Brady but because he’s one of the more recognizable football players, athletes in the world. So, he gets into the huddle, there’s two minutes left in the game, and he’s getting the play calls into his helmet from his coach, and he’s talking to his teammates, and he’s hearing what’s going on, and he lets them know the play, and they all break and they spread out into the field, and he sees the defense, and they’re moving around, and his offense is looking at him.

And then he sees this wide receiver, and he’s not in the right spot. And he looks at him, he goes, “Oh, I don’t know. Should I? Well, we’re going to have a review of the game on Monday. Maybe I’ll tell him to move over on Monday. You know what, we’re almost at the end of the season, we’re going to do our annual reviews at the end of the season, so I’ll tell him that he’s not in the right, or I could just send him an email, too.” We would think that’s ridiculous. That just doesn’t happen. Tom looks at the guy, and he says, “Move over!” He might even say, “Move…” insert swear word “…over!” And the receiver doesn’t think twice of it, he needed to know how to be in the right spot so that they could move forward towards a common goal together efficiently and effectively.

Yet, in the workplace, we do that. In the workplace, we say, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just send him an email. Well, I waited too long to send that email, so I’ll tell him when he have a debrief on this client. Well, I didn’t do it then because we didn’t have time, so I’ll just do it at the annual performance review.” That’s not helping anybody grow. That’s not being consistent. And so, one of the really important things is actually just to be timely when you give feedback so they know when to expect it.

On our team, one of the things we do is we have a feedback debrief in between each workshop that we do. I actually have to send one out to the group on the last workshop that I did yesterday and the day before to say, “Here’s what worked. Here’s what didn’t.” If I only sent an email out when things were going really well, or when things were really bad, then people would be afraid when they got an email from me, and they’d say, “Oh, no. Is this…what did we do wrong?” But the consistency is each session that we have, each week that we do it, people will know, “Here’s the email. You know to expect something that worked, something that didn’t work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s huge and powerful. And I’m thinking about this football analogy in terms of, yeah, you’re right, that would be ridiculous to think about giving feedback in that way. I guess I’m also thinking about my experience of when I’m working with sort of creative types, like, “Hey, we’re making a logo, or we’re doing whatever,” I find it so interesting is when I share feedback in terms of, “You know what, that white space, it just seems like it’s so tight, it’s kind of uncomfortable, whatever.”

And it’s funny because sometimes I think that I sound kind of weird talking about design-type things, or art-type things, or I was talking to my audio people, it’s like, “I think my voice sounds a little robot-y at times. I don’t know if it’s being processed in a certain way.” And so, they appreciate it, like, “Oh, that’s great. Thank you. Yeah, I’m really going to dig into that.”

And so, as opposed to I guess that it’s just rare that I work with someone in my kind of creative capacity and they get really defensive or angry or irritated, like, “How dare you? You don’t sound robot-y. We mastered your voice perfectly,” or, “You don’t know jack about logos. What I made is excellent.” What do you think that’s about in terms of the mindset if it’s a football player or a logo designer versus an office professional? And why sort of feedback is often not given the same way and often not received the same way?

Aaron Levy
Well, I think you’d find it interesting if you go to that same logo designer and sit in in one of their internal meetings or discussion with a boss about a project, because I think it’s not that certain types of people do or don’t do it. I think, yes, that does happen. It’s also the culture and the team by which we operate and agree to do it. And so, it’s kind of part of the agreement with the client if you’re doing something creative with them that there’s going to be a bunch of iterations in the process, right? Iteration is part of the process.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go, yeah.

Aaron Levy
Yet, are we agreeing to iteration when we’re determining the next steps to go forward or the strategy as a business, or when we’re trying to figure out how to be better at sending client emails? Are we agreeing to iteration? And that iteration, that understanding that there’s a back and forth, that’s how you get to the best possible outcome that you need feedback from all points of view and different perspectives to get to the better outcome is something that is often missing.

And that’s also why when you’re able to create psychological safety, that’s one of the things that drives team performance. It’s what’s missing from a lot of teams, is the ability to feel like, “I can give that feedback and can say what needs to be said even if I’m a first-year person in this company, and I’m saying it to the senior director.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I like that a lot that it’s sort of, like, “Are we agreeing to have these iterations?” Like, “Is there an expectation of iteration?” Oh, is that trademarked yet, Aaron?

Aaron Levy
It’s not. It’s not. It’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s see, maybe it needs to be, one of us. Is there an expectation of iteration or is there not? And so, if someone is sharing something and they kind of think, “Well, hey, I’m a genius. I’ve got it figured out and this is the way forward and what we’re going to do, and you all need to respect that.” And then they get challenged, like, “Oh, hey, what if we did this?” Like, “No, Aaron, actually, I’d like to do it the way I said I wanted to do it,” like a little snippy there. It’s like, “Oh, okay. Note to self: Don’t speak up. I don’t feel psychological safety.”

And then, yeah, I think you’ve nailed it there. It’s, “Do we or do we not have an expectation of iteration?” And I think, for the most part, it’d behoove us to have that about most things. Is that fair to say in your view?

Aaron Levy
I’ll give you the way in which I think about it. I go on a daily basis to meet with new groups of people and do, we’d dive into trainings. And most of the time, they’re 20 or 40 hours over the course of 6 to 12 months, but sometimes it’s just a day, or a day and a half, or it’s an hour. And even in that amount of time with a group that I’m just working with the first time, I create a set of agreements with them and we establish agreements for how we’re going to work together in this room.

And one of the agreements, to what you said, Pete, is do the next hard thing. And what we mean by do the next hard thing is challenge yourself, get out of your comfort zone, speak up, try things out and make mistakes, challenge me. And so, in doing that, the expectation is someone to raise their hand and say, “You know what, Aaron, I disagree with you.” That’s what we look for because that’s how you breathe and grow great learning and great development. It’s how you process information. It’s not supposed to all be clean and logical. It’s supposed to be a little bit messy.

And so, when you ask, “Is that something that should happen all the time?” Yeah. Let me just extrapolate. If I’m doing that in an hour of session with a group that I’m meeting with once, imagine what you could benefit from if you’re doing that with people you work with on a daily basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so what I’m loving here is that you’re so gung-ho on these agreements. I’d love to hear what do you find are some of the top agreements that make a world of difference in unlocking high performance?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I think the number one agreement that makes the world of difference in high performance and also, in my mind, just the world a better place, and the way in which I describe it is it’s called embracing a beginner’s mind. And I go back to this quote by Gino Wickman from the book Traction where says, “The mind is like a parachute. It has to be opened for it to work.”

And if we’re not coming into a room, a situation, an environment with our minds open to different possibilities, then we really have a narrow perspective. And when you have that open perspective, it just creates so much more possibility, so much more growth, so much more learning, so much more development, so much more opportunity.

And so, that is the key indicator of success with employees on my company, with leaders that we work with, with clients that we work with. If they have that, which we seek out of all those different constituents, then success will be there, and high-performing teams will thrive if you have, at least, a beginner’s mind. So, a beginner’s mindset is the biggest one in my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s a great one. And lay on another one or two for us.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. Act with authenticity and humility. The way in which I describe this is it’s almost like you can sit back in your chair and you can finally take a breath. You don’t have to put on a mask of the work you. You don’t have to be the leader that has all the answers. You don’t have to be the Steve Jobs who is brash and rude, or the Bill Gates who is measure three times then cut once. The right type of leader and the right type of contributor you can be is actually just being yourself.

Trying to be somebody else, being inauthentic, people see through that. We’re trained at understanding and seeing facial expressions and emotions, whether we know we’re trained or not, we’ve been doing it since we’re little kids before we could even talk. We can understand facial expressions and body language.

And so, when we’re inauthentic, it feeds and it breathes to other people. And so, being authentic, and humble, too, not just braggadocious, but also humble and having some humility to how you show up in this world is one of those things that is just freeing. It kind of unlocks and releases this mask that a lot of us tend to put on when we go into work and want to be awesome by trying to be awesome, as opposed to being ourselves, embracing beginner’s mind, doing the next hard thing, and doing the work.

Pete Mockaitis
Good stuff. Aaron, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I would say one of the agreements that I constantly bring up is assume positive intent. Oftentimes, when we’re in the workplace, we can read an email or a text message, we go, “Oh, why did she…?” And think that somebody else is out there trying to hurt you, and we constantly go like it’s a battle, like people are trying to hurt us, that we’re working with.

The truth is that most people are just trying their best to do their best. And they might’ve made a mistake, they might’ve done something to really just figure something out, and if we can assume that everybody is doing their best, assume positive intent, it’s going to make the team that you work with a lot happier to be on.

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

Aaron Levy
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.”

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

Aaron Levy
I’ve really enjoyed the Bloomer’s experiment. Do you want me to dive into it or just a high level?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear a sentence or two and the setup and the results.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. What they did was they looked at a group of students and they randomly assigned certain students to be high performers or bloomers, and another group of students to be non-high performers. They just picked them out of a hat basically. They didn’t tell the students that they were labeled as high performer or not but they did tell their teacher.

And as they looked at the course of the year and saw what happened, what they realized was the people labeled as high performers dramatically outperformed, statistically significantly outperformed, the non-high performers. And what’s interesting is, again, the students didn’t know. But who knew? The teachers.

And what the teachers did, subconsciously, is they gave more energy and attention and focus. They actually just spent more time listening and hearing those students that they thought were high performers. The coolest thing about this, to me, is the question that comes out of it, which is, “What if we treated everybody like a high performer? What would be possible then?”

And so, that’s something I keep in my mind and have our leaders think about, “What if instead of treating your high performers like high performers, what if you treated the other people in your team like they have the opportunity to be high performers? How much better would they do? How much more would they grow? How much better would your team do as a result?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, this reminds me of – what’s that educational teacher movie, Stand and Deliver?

Aaron Levy
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And Jaime Escalante, he says that students will rise to the level of expectations. And I think there really is some truth to that. Thank you.

Aaron Levy
You’re welcome. Totally. Yeah, thank you for asking that. That’s just a fun one that I’ve really enjoyed lately.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Aaron Levy
I’ll go with a recent book that I just really, really enjoyed, which is Give and Take by Adam Grant. I took a while to read it because I thought I knew what it was about, it’s about givers and takers. But it’s just diving into it more. It talks about, really, the way in which we show up with other people and what we get when we give.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, I like the way you said that. It took you a while to read because you thought you knew what was in it. I’m in the same boat. So, I’m putting you on the spot. Can you share with us an insight that you didn’t have until you actually read it as opposed to just thinking you already knew it?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I’ll share one insight. It’s actually from a study by Elliot Aronson, it’s called The Pratfall Effect. And in it, what came out of this was, as a giver, or just as a person, you don’t always have to have the right answer, you don’t always have to be perfect. Actually, what the studies show is you’re liked more if you make some mistakes, if you screw up a little bit. As long as you’re still seen as competent, if you screw up a little bit, you’re seen more as human and so people like you more.

So, if you’re a lawyer who has a stutter, that actually could improve your likelihood of winning a case. And so, that’s just something I wouldn’t have imagined was in Give and Take, and it was. And the way it was explained and shared and the stories behind it, Adam Grant is awesome. I’m just a really big fan of the way he thinks about the workplace, the way he thinks about people, and the way he shares stories.

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

Aaron Levy
So, I have been using, just lately, honestly, lately, the Google Tasks button. And so, Google Tasks is on my phone, Google Tasks is on my calendar and on my email, and it’s just really easy to just put things in a checklist. For a while, I would email myself, “Do this, do that,” and I’d had it come to my inbox after out for a day with 20 emails from Aaron to Aaron that just has a different task, and it was silly. And so, just compiling them in a simple to-do list. The thing I like about it is in the place I work so it comes up right in my email.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Aaron Levy
Meditating.

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

Aaron Levy
Feedback is a gift.

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

Aaron Levy
They can go to RaiseBar.co or the book website which is OpenHonestandDirect.com. On there is a whole toolkit of some of the tools we actually talked about today.

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

Aaron Levy
Yeah. Pick one thing from today’s conversation and practice it and aim for consistency over the next week. So, just one thing that you took away, whether it’s waiting five minutes and having a phone call as opposed to drafting an email, or it’s practicing avoiding using absolutes. Work on being consistent on just one thing, that’s my call to action for people listening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Aaron, it’s been fun once again. Keep up the good work and keep raising the bar.

Aaron Levy
Oh, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Dec 13
0

524: How to Build Rapport Quickly with John DiJulius

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John DiJulius: "The greatest gift we can give others is the gift of attention."

John DiJulius shares his expert tips for quickly building lasting emotional ties.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Four touchpoints that effectively build rapport
  2. The subtle ways you’re killing the conversation
  3. How to go from indifferent to curious

About John:

John is the authority on World-Class customer experience. He is an international consultant, keynote speaker, and best-selling author of five customer service books. His newest book, The Relationship Economy: Building Stronger Customer Connections in The Digital Age could not be timelier in the world we are living in. John has worked with companies such as The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestlé, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Celebrity Cruises, Anytime Fitness, Progressive Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Chick-fil-A, and many more.

Items mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsor!

  • Honeybook. Save time on the admin of your business so you can do more of what you love. Get 50% off your first year at HoneyBook.com/awesome

John DiJulius Interview Transcript

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

John DiJulius
My pleasure. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to hear, first of all, what’s the backstory behind you failing gym class in high school?

John DiJulius
You know, I was a very small, have not developed yet, and went to a high school that produced a lot of NFL athletes, and I was like 4’11”, maybe 85 pounds, and so I just decided I didn’t want to go in the locker room and change every day. And what I didn’t know was when I didn’t change into my gym uniform, I didn’t get credit for the class, so at the end of the year I flunk it and had to go to summer school for gym.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I imagine there were many days which you were wearing the wrong outfit.

John DiJulius
I would just wear my dress clothes every day and I didn’t realize I was getting like a not-attended, like absent.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s wild and no one would give you a hand-up, “Hey, John, so you know, I see you physically present but you don’t get credit for today because of what you’re wearing,” but rather they just fail you at the end. Boy, I think that is like I’m thinking about Kim Scott of Radical Candor now, who we had on the show, talking about how when people get fired because they never got goof feedback along the way to improve their shortcomings and blind spots. Boy, here that is a very dramatic instance. But you bounced back, I’m glad to hear.

John DiJulius
I did okay. I did okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, so I want to hear, you are talking a lot these days about building stronger customer connections in the digital age. Could you lay it on us, what are some of the benefits associated with face-to-face connections and this old-school stuff when technology is running the show it seems most of our communications?

John DiJulius
Well, yeah, it’s back to the future today. It’s ironic that the disruptor today in business is good old-fashioned relationships. And there’s a seismic shift happening in the world today with all the benefits technology is bringing us, it’s coming at a significant cost, and that cost is human relationship, which is vital to customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and just overall happiness personally and professionally. And today’s illiterates are those who have an inability to make a meaningful connection.

And so, the best companies are competing in the relationship economy where the primary currency is the emotional connections made with customers, employees, and vendors that make your brand the brand that people can’t live without and, ultimately, help make you price irrelevant.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds great. So, could you share with us some of the most, I guess, hard-hitting research data studies associated with the observation of this phenomenon?

John DiJulius
Yeah. Well, first, by year 2025, there’ll be more machines in the workforce, and robots and artificial intelligence will be capable of doing every job that we’re currently doing from lawyers to judges to driving to construction, from doctors to nurses, to something that, I just got an email last week. It was a little unsettling that there’s artificial-intelligent brothels. I’m not endorsing, I’m not recommending…

Pete Mockaitis
Well, the oldest professions taking over there.

John DiJulius
Right, right. I’m not judging, I’m just reporting. So, it literally is doing everything and you’ll never have to see another human being, I guess, if you choose as long as you live.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the prediction is by 2025 machines will be doing every job that humans are doing, although I imagine they’ll be doing many of them poorly based on what I’m seeing these days.

John DiJulius
Yeah, and not every job, but capable of doing every job and that more machines will be in the workforce than human beings.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about that? So, tell us, how does the human connection help in that context?

John DiJulius
Well, as a result of living in the touchscreen age, and the touchscreen age is not generational specific, we have grandparents using devices and we have five-year olds on iPads, but as a result, our social skills, our people skills are an all-time low and this is causing many negative side effects.

They’ve also said that there’s a term called digital dementia where doctors have done brain scans of heavy users of digital devices and they look similar to patients who’ve sustained brain injuries. So, we’re relationship disadvantaged today, and the leaders out there of businesses need to understand that it’s our problem to fix. We can’t skip this generation.

And so, the companies that the pendulum has swung so far over the high-tech low-touch or no touch, people, consumers, you, me, we’re starving to be recognized as a person with a name, and technology is not the enemy. Using it to eliminate human experience is. So, companies, the best companies are finding ways to marry the digital with the human interaction that allows technology you use to do the most basic necessities, freeing up your employees to do what’s most important: that’s building the customer loyalty, that is long-term sustainability for the business.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then, I’d love to get your take, in particular, when it comes to if we’re looking to build some rapport, whether that’s with sort of new colleagues around the given workplace, or with prospects, or customers, or potential partners, just about anybody, what do you recommend for folks who are looking to more conscientiously build more human connection?

John DiJulius
Yes. So, there’s five key characteristics to the art of building relationship, and they may sound, to older generations, like common sense, but we all have gotten away from it and it’s not common sense to younger generations. So, I’ll rattle off the five first. You must be authentic, right? You must have insatiable curiosity. You must have credible empathy. You must love people and must be a great listener. So, all those five. Four of them can definitely be taught and trained.

Now, if you find people that have those, that’s great. But the one that can’t be taught, no amount of training can ever change someone, if they don’t love people. You can’t train someone to love people. So, let’s look at insatiable curiosity. Being an investigative reporter is the best, people dying to learn about others, not only about subjects that interests them but subjects that are unfamiliar.

So, I did a TED Talk called “Meet as Strangers, Leave as Friends.” I don’t think there’s a greater skill that we can work on ourselves or teach at any level from kindergarten to the business world, at home, than the ability to build instant rapport with others, whether that be an acquaintance, stranger, co-worker, customer, you name it.

And so, in doing that, there’s two things we got to remember that everyone we come in contact with has an invisible sign above their head that says, “Make me feel important.” And the greatest gift we can give others is the gift of attention. Now, it’s hard to do that because we’re all genetically coded to be preoccupied, “It’s my flight that got delayed.” “It’s my client that’s upset with us.” “It’s my son that may have gotten in trouble,” right? So, that’s a hard thing to turn off when you speak to other people.

So, we have this great technique that so many of our clients have incorporated and I incorporate in personal and professional. It’s anytime you have a conversation with someone, be it 3 minutes or 30 minutes, you need to focus on the other person’s FORD, F-O-R-D, like the car. And if you can focus on the other person’s FORD, you not only built the relationship, you own the relationship.

So, F, family. Are they married? Do they have kids? How old are their kids? The O, occupation. What do they do? What’s their title? Who are they doing it for? R, recreation, that’s some of the hottest buttons that people have. What do they do with their free time? Are they runners? Do they go to hot yoga? Do they coach little league? Whatever that may be. And then D stands for dreams. What’s on their bucket list? What’s their dream vacation? What is their encore career?

So, all of our clients have incorporated FORD into their daily interactions. They collect this in a non-soliciting way and they have it in their CRM system, they have pads that remind it, and it’s just a great way to build that emotional connection of what’s really important to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned 3 minutes, so maybe we can run some demos here. And I’d like to hear both in terms of you’re just meeting someone for the first time and, I guess, you’re reconnecting, like, oh, you bumped into someone, it’s been a few months since you’ve seen them, and we’re having a chat. So, can you show us how it’s done, John?

John DiJulius
Yeah. So, Pete, where are you at today?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m in Chicago.

John DiJulius
In Chicago? Okay. So, we’re having a similar weather. I’m from Cleveland so we’re both from the Midwest and it’s cold out, it’s snowing here. But are you originally from Chicago?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I grew up in Danville, Illinois about three hours away, but I’ve spent almost my whole life in Illinois.

John DiJulius
Good. Good. You have family? Kids?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We got two kids under two right now.

John DiJulius
Under two, both of them?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

John DiJulius
Oh, so you’re sleep-deprived.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, my wife more so than I am as a saint as she is, but, yes, I’m feeling it a bit as well.

John DiJulius
Congratulations. How long have you been married?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in fact, today is our three-year anniversary.

John DiJulius
No way. And that’s why we had this call to celebrate.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s December 3rd at 3:00 p.m. Central in this moment that we’re recording. That’s kind of wild, John.

John DiJulius
December 3rd, 2016 you got married.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

John DiJulius
That’s awesome. So, usually, whenever you start off with anyone, you just kind of catch up, you find some common ground, but it’s important to focus on them and find out what their hot buttons are and, obviously, where they come from, their family. If we had more time while we’re doing this, we’d get in to how you got into what you’re doing now, and that’s a great story.

So, listening is great and doing research for this book was painful because I realized how many things I was doing wrong. So, I have some conversation nevers and always. So, some listening is, if you have some questions and you don’t ask two to three follow-up questions, odds are you aren’t really paying attention, right? You should have a four-to-one ratio of questions asked versus answered.

There’s a myth that being a good listener is like being a sponge, and they say that’s the farthest thing from the truth. Being a sponge is you’re just talking away and once in a while just saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” They say that’s not being a good listener. Being a good listener is being a trampoline. And so, a trampoline is asking more clarifying questions and helping and heightening the energy of what the person speaking is doing.

So, there’s a lot of really cool things. I’ve got some really painful things I stumbled on was don’t ask a question because you’re dying to answer it, right? So, it’s like, “Pete, tell me what you did this week. Oh, good, good. You know what I did?”

Pete Mockaitis
“I was skiing. It was awesome.” Yeah, I hear you.

John DiJulius
Right. Don’t finish the other person’s sentence. And I’m that I’m really guilty of that I never thought it was a bad thing until I read about it is stealing someone’s thunder. And so, the example I read about really made me realize I do this all the time, but I did it with good intentions. So, you might have an employee that was off last week and they’re like, “Peter Jr., what did you do on vacation?” And young Peter says he took his wife and their two little ones to Disney, and he’s so excited he wants to tell you about it, and you interrupt him by saying, “Oh, my God, I love Disney. We actually have a house there in Orlando.”

And originally thinking that would show some commonality but you just stole his thunder because what could someone possibly tell someone about Disney who has property there, right? So, just being more attentive to not one-upping or grandstanding and just letting the other person have their moment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really nice thought. I’m thinking almost like a game of chess, not that we’re trying to dominate the other, but you want to think about what that does open up in terms of moves after your move. So, you might mention, “Oh, hey, it’s common. I’ve got a home in Orlando.” But if you think about that for a moment, it’s like, “What options does that leave this person? Very few.”

So, yeah, I dig that. Thinking back to the demonstration there, so it seems like we’ve gotten into the family side of things. But I’d love to hear us unpack the full demo of we’ve got occupation, the recreation, and the dreams.

John DiJulius
And so, dependent on the scope, the dynamic of why we’re meeting, why we’re talking, right? If it’s a social thing, then you have at it with the FORD. But if it’s maybe a sales call, or a business call, you obviously want to hit one or two of those. You typically don’t have time to hit on four unless it really gets off, and it also depends on how well we know each other.

So, if we’re brand-new and you just started, you just kind of want to, again, start off, that’s how I start up most calls first time is, “Where are you calling from? Oh, Chicago. Tell me how your year is spent.” I find out something that you like, and your kids, then why you got into the position, whatever that position is. And then I use that information later on.

Now, there’s also times when you go out with your significant other, and her husband, and that’s a completely different, you know, you got two hours. I will just drill that person for two hours and just learn as much as I can about them. And, again, another painful thing. Thirty years that I learned from the research in my book, 30 years ago if you couldn’t talk to me about my two subjects, and that was all I was interested in, which was basically baseball or customer service, then I don’t want anything to do with you, right?

My wife said, “Hey, we’re going to go out with Joann and her husband,” I’d be like, “Oh, God, no. Oh, I can’t sit through another night with them.” And that was solely my fault because I was only interested in my thing. But I’ve learned, through what’s called insatiable curiosity, to become an investigative reporter, and just really pick someone’s brain. And you might find out obscure things that you might not be interested in, he might be interested in fly-fishing, and you dig deep why, like, “How did you get into fly-fishing? And, to me, that seems a little boring.”

And at the end of the conversation, three things always come away. One, I really see why that person likes, let’s say, fly-fishing. It doesn’t mean I have to go out and do it tomorrow, but from his passion, or the way he talked about it, the benefits, now I can see it. Number two, which probably most is important, he really liked talking to me, which means I win points at home with my significant other, right?

But here’s the strangest thing. This always happens. I’m sure it’s happened in your life, six months later I’ll be in CEO’s office trying to close a sale or something, and there’ll be a picture of him fly-fishing on his wall. And because of that conversation, I can have a more educated conversation and make a connection easier than if I never had that connection.

So, I mean, there’s so many benefits but there’s things like we find out from our clients or acquaintances that they’re running their first marathon this weekend, or they’re going to Maui, and you could do so many things with that. If it’s a good client, we’ll have a bottle of wine and cheese waiting for them when they get into their room. So, there’s just so much. We’re just circling back two weeks and finding out how their trip to Maui was.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And so, I’m curious, when it comes to – huh, curious about curiosity – so now, I guess, I think where the rubber really meets the road is you’re chatting with someone, they say something, you have no interest in that thing whatsoever. What do you do with your brain to stir up some of this interesting curiosity when you’re not feeling it in the moment?

John DiJulius
I train myself because you just got to be, called, investigative reporter. You want to find what makes them tick. So, if it’s important to the other person, find out why, and that’s where the beauty, that’s where the magic happens because, again, when you first tell me…so, I’m being transparent here. But what’s your recreation? What do you like to do with your time off, when you’re not changing diapers?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, why don’t we say tabletop games, shall we? I’m thinking about Monopoly at the moment.

John DiJulius
Okay. And so, that’s not something I personally, I wouldn’t say this, I personally don’t play games and so I would just explore, “How did you get into this? Is it something that started as a kid?” And I would just ask four or five questions to try to get you to explain that is. Again, depending on the situation, if we have a 15-minute call then that wouldn’t be something. But something that I can feasibly do.

Everything has an angle because what would get someone to love tabletop games? There’s a story there. And, usually, if it’s something they’re passionate about, they like telling that story. Most people don’t ask them about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I think this might be a great example, and you can very candidly tell me what’s going on in your brain because you’re not going to hurt my feelings. It’s okay if you walk away still not giving a hoot about tabletop games or Monopoly but I think that’s a cool start. So, here we are, I’ve shared something that isn’t that interesting to you, but let’s say we have the time. So, where would you go from there?

John DiJulius
So, yeah, what tabletop games? And you said, like, “Monopoly.”

Pete Mockaitis
Sure, let’s say Monopoly.

John DiJulius
Yeah, is this something you do, like, regularly? Is it something like you get people around? How often do you do this and with whom?

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, you know, it’s been a while. I remember the peak Monopoly occurred in the winter breaks of high school and college where my crew – shout out to Ronnie, Kevin, Brent, and Kate – for the most part, we would be the ones who’d come together and maybe just play three, four games in a night, so no joke, five, six, seven hours of Monopoly.

John DiJulius
That’s what I was going to ask you, how many hours. So, that’s like equivalent to what people are doing today with binge-watching an episode or something.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

John DiJulius
But I gotta believe that was like some of your best memories and bonding and hilarious stories that came from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s funny. Indeed, we had all kinds of dorkiness came out because we play pretty strictly in terms of official tournament rules, 32 hours, 12 hotels, none of this silliness.

John DiJulius
You guys were serious.

Pete Mockaitis
We want to keep to roll the dice briskly so we could finish the games, most of them we finish under 90 minutes because we were kind of moving with it, and all kinds of little, I guess, subcultural things emerge like when all 32 houses were bought up and then someone landed on another property, had to have a big payday, then we’d start chanting, “Sell houses! Sell houses!” because we were all excited, “Now, we got a chance to buy some houses because this guy has been hogging them, and he just got a painful rent payment that will force him to liquidate some of his houses,” and so there’s like blood in the water and we all got fired up over it.

John DiJulius
So, do you ever have reunions with Ronnie and the gang?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it happens here and there, but it’s a little bit tricky in terms of us being located all over the place.

John DiJulius
Can you play virtually?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’ve looked into this and the answer is kind of. I haven’t found like the ideal platform that is reliable and honors true tournament rules, but there’s some stuff out there, yeah.

John DiJulius
You know, one thing I’m curious about, again, I’ve never had the patience to sit through a full game of Monopoly. But my son did buy me a Monopoly board, or they made me, or something, last year, a Monopoly board, like around our family so the houses would be different vacations. It’s really cute. It was all personalized. But I gotta believe that doing something that much, what was the lesson, the life lessons that you applied to business or whatever? I mean, there had to be.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny. Someone wrote a whole book called Everything I Need to Know from Life I Learned from Playing Monopoly or something like that. And Brent bought me a copy, so that was nice of him and so there’s all sorts of bits there. And perhaps the biggest one, I think for me, is that there are times in Monopoly and times in life where the value of something really changes in terms of in the early game, we have lots of cash and no properties, so the value of property is high relative to the cash. And so, I would be willing to buy almost any property from someone at 20%, 30%, 50% markup in the early game.

But then, later on, when people have their monopolies and they’ve got sort of excess property, they very much want to liquidate that into cash so they can acquire houses to turn it into a deadly zone. So, I find that interesting, is how sometimes the value of something really does shift based on your context and how sort of abundant versus scarce something is relative to the other stuff. So, sometimes I think, in life, you might have an abundance of time, or you might have an abundance of money, and you have one and not the other.

College, plenty of time, not so much money. In certain jobs, I’m thinking about Wall Street bankers right now, plenty of money, not so much time. And then it changes what you’re willing to pay for something, whether in terms of hours or dollars.

John DiJulius
Yeah, I got to believe it also maybe add a cautionary to, “Do I really want this? Will this really be that important to me in 18 months or however long that is because things change so rapidly?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

John DiJulius
Very cool. Very cool. Well, I still got to believe the best thing that came were just the memories, the conversations, the digging at each other that close groups of friends do when you get together, that all comes back.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Perhaps the most legendary one was we hosted a Monopoly tournament at the high school just because we had various student leadership positions and said, “Well, we like Monopoly, and this is what we feel like doing.” And I was helping at another table with a rules dispute and my buddy, Kevin, whispered to this, like, 10-year old girl who’s at our table, “He’s winning. You should trade that to me.” And when I turned my back, the trade had been done, I was like, “What happened?” And Kevin went on to win the whole tournament, and he’s featured in the yearbook and I consider it stolen.

John DiJulius
That’s so funny. That’s funny. Well, very good. Now, I’m intrigued to play Monopoly the next time someone pulls it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. All right. Well, thank you for indulging me with that extended demo. Well, you’re right in terms of the rapport in that the more you get people, I guess, I’m not looking at your face, but I’m hearing your voice, but I guess it’s just very natural that as you steer me towards positive experiences, and I am sharing them with you in a current experience of conversation, I naturally associate you, John, with pleasantness and, thusly, I like you more.

John DiJulius
Exactly. Who came out of the original Bible, the How to Win Friends and Influence People, whatever the order is, by Dale Carnegie, and he, in there, says, “You could talk to someone for an hour about them, and they won’t ask you one question about you, but they’ll walk away saying you are the greatest person ever even though they couldn’t tell someone why.” But, exactly what you just said, they’ll just associate you with that fondness, and they were able to talk about, you know, there are certain things in my world that you don’t want to ask me unless you have two hours because I’m going to tell you, I’m going to get all worked up, and my voice will start cracking, and you’ll be like, “Whoa, whoa,” right? So, finding people’s hot buttons is the single best way to create an emotional connection.

And then doing something with that. Taking three minutes on Google later and seeing if there’s any digital Monopoly things, and you send that email to Peter, saying, “Peter, have you seen this?” It literally takes three minutes, and whether he has seen them or he hasn’t, he’s going to be shocked at the time and thoughtfulness that that person, who he barely has a relationship, thought of, and it’s not just about making a sale.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true, yes. And if you did find it, I’d be really tickled. If you say, “Hey, Pete, it turns out like the 1996 PC version enables you to host something on a something, so you can get your friends together, and it will work just the way you want it.” Like, “I never would’ve guessed that that 1996 whatever would do the trick.” And then I’d be thinking about you forever. So, that’s cool.

Well, so, tell me, John, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

John DiJulius
No, no, no, that’s it. Just love the relationship economy and, like I said, it’s back to the future. It’s what is missing from our society today, and people are starving to be recognized as a human being with needs, and fears, and things to celebrate, and achievements, and all those things. And the ones that are giving it to them are building that customer and employee loyalty.

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

John DiJulius
Something that pops up in my phone every morning at 6:00 a.m. is “Act as if today is the day you’ll be remembered for how you treat others.” I love that. That’s very important to me.

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

John DiJulius
You know, I’m just coming from writing this book. There were just so much research. One of my favorite aha moments was a scientist studied the human brain and found out that it took the human brain a minimum of 0.6 seconds to formulate a response to something said to it. And then they studied hundreds and thousands of conversations and found the average gap between people talking was 0.2 seconds, one-third the time the human brain will allow. And so, really, don’t have that answer, don’t be just waiting for him to come up for air, listen to what he’s saying, pause, process it, and then move on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, that is so reassuring in many ways for me because sometimes it’s like there is that first half second, I guess, before the 0.6 seconds has fully come online then you have a thought, where there’s silence and they almost sort of expect you to say something, but you don’t yet have that thing. And just to know that, “Hey, it’s okay. It takes about 0.6 seconds on average.” And, really, I think it takes about, in my experience, four or five seconds before people say, like, on the phone, “Hey, Pete, are you still there?” so you have time to pause and think.

John DiJulius
Oh, I have a hard time with that, when people do pause too much. I always check my phone, I think I dropped the call, and I’m like, “Something is wrong,” because I’m not used to a pause.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And something else, you can just inhale for a while. Yeah. Well, that’s a great stat. Thank you. How about a favorite book that you love?

John DiJulius
I’ll go with the most recent one that I just read, and that was From the Ground Up by Howard Schultz, the former CEO Chairman of Starbucks. It’s his third book. I love every book he’s written, and each better than the previous, and just a great story of his life, and why he created one of the most social-conscious companies in the world, and it’s really inspiring to me.

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

John DiJulius
You reminded me in one of your emails–Evernote. I love Evernote. I am a to-do crazy person so I like how that works. In all my devices–iPads, phones, computers–it’s always synced. And then what I like about it is my own to-do list in there, the way I sort it. I sort my to-do that I can only have three urgent, that’s all I’ll put on there. I can never have more than three, and that means I can’t go home today, go to bed, whatever that may be, unless I get those three done.

And then I have six important, maximum six, and then the rest are want-to-do, need-to-do, and that can be unlimited. But I’m always working from that urgent three and then the six important. It just keeps clarity that I’m always joined with what I need to do before what I want to do.

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

John DiJulius
Just trying to build a relationship with myself. MSA is a thing that’s a real thing – mental stimulation addiction. And that just means that we’re so used to using our devices, and I’ve gone to the doctor’s office and be waiting to be taken, and I’ll check my phone and all the apps and news and ESPN and social media, all that stuff, and I’ll put it down, and within 15 seconds, without thinking, I do it again, and like, “What could it change in that 15 seconds?”

And so, they say because we’re outsourcing our brains to devices, our brains are extra thin and we have a creativity crisis. We aren’t innovative like we were generations ago. So, I’m trying to build in boredom into my life where that’s when your brain sits idle. We all say we get the best ideas when we take showers. Well, I don’t take enough showers so it might be even like when I’m getting a run or exercise in the morning, instead of listening to a podcast or ESPN like I like to a couple of days a week, I’ll listen to nothing. And it’s strange at first, but I’ll tell you what, when I get back home, I have to find paper and pen because I had so many ideas that came to my head.

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

John DiJulius
I think probably the one, the quote I said earlier. A lot of people like that, the “Act as if today is the day you’ll be remembered for how you treat others.”

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

John DiJulius
TheDijuliusGroup.com or they could email me at John@dijuliusgroup.com.

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

John DiJulius
Yeah. Just go out and build relationships and the rest will follow. I don’t believe in networking. I’m not a good networker. I never have business cards on me but I do believe in building social capital. And stop networking in a traditional sense and just meet and build relationships where the relationship itself is its own reward, and the rest will take care of itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, John, thanks so much for sharing the good word, and good luck in all your relationship-building.

John DiJulius
Thank you and good luck to you with your bride and your two young ones.

Dec 02
0

519: How to Have Productive Disagreements with Buster Benson

By | Podcasts | No Comments


 

Buster Benson says: "The real challenge here is not to solve all disagreements... but to actually learn a bigger perspective through disagreement."
Buster Benson discusses how to conquer your fear of conflict and start disagreeing well.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The surprising cost of avoiding conflict
  2. Eight crucial steps for productive disagreement
  3. What to do when you disagree with your boss

About Buster

Buster Benson is an entrepreneur and a former product leader at Amazon, Twitter, Slack, and Patreon. He’s now editor of and writer for the Better Humans publication on Medium, creator of 750Words.com which brings private journaling to a safe place on the web, and developer of Fruitful Zone, an online platform facilitating healthy discourse. He is also author of the Cognitive Bias cheat sheet with over one million reads.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Buster Benson Interview Transcript

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

Buster Benson
Thank you. I’m really excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be talking to you. There have been no other guests who have created a poster that hangs in my office.

Buster Benson
Oh, wow. Cool.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you have that unique distinction. “The Cognitive Bias Codex,” it is a work of art. And could you maybe share the story of that because I’m thinking it’s so cool?

Buster Benson
Yeah. It was a really strange and long story but like, basically, I have been interested in cognitive biases fairly pretty much my whole life and yet I always felt them really hard to remember. There’s just so many of them, there’s 200 plus, they all have really weird names, like the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon so there was no easy way for me to actually internalize what was happening here. And I’ve decided to take a couple of weeks, a couple of years ago, in 2016, to essentially try to eat this entire body of knowledge and figure out how to synthesize it into something I can understand.

And so, what came out of it was this framework where, instead of thinking about biases as mental bugs where your brain is glitching out, they’re actually all there to solve hard problems, like there’s too much information in the world, so we do have to filter some things out. Nothing really makes sense so we do have to connect the dots and fill in the gaps with sometimes generalities and stereotypes. And we also have to do things, like we can’t just sit and talk about it all day long. We got to go out and make decisions and take action, and that means that we have to be confident even though we don’t have all the information in front of us.

And so, all of the biases in the world fit into these categories. And when this poster was written, I figured I might as well make it a visual because this is already still such a hard topic, but make it look really nice, and the poster came out of that. And with a friend of mine, John Manoogian. and he really helped make it look like something beautiful, like a work of art.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, it is and it hangs there and I’ve been wondering if it’s possible for me to get that as a sound wrap, like an acoustic panel, you know, and that’d be the visual so it serves a double duty.

Buster Benson
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But, anyway, so thank you for that. It’s really cool. And I love some of those names, they’re funny. Some of them are crazy and some of them are intuitive, like the IKEA effect, it’s like, “Oh, that’s exactly what I think it would be.”

Buster Benson
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“I spent all this time assembling something I think it’s worth more because I invest in that.” Is there a particular cognitive bias that shows up for you a lot still today even after all of your research and work?

Buster Benson
Well, that’s the thing is they don’t go away just because you know the name, unfortunately. Yes, so the confirmation bias is obviously one that really affects us today where we tend to not only prefer information that confirms us but, now, we’re actually also just only seeking out sources of information that confirm our biases. So, that’s an important one to think about.

There’s also the one called naïve realism which is really interesting and somewhat depressing, I guess, if you think about it too much. But it’s this idea that we think that what we think of people is what they’re actually thinking, and this happens a lot in conversations and debates and disagreements. We might say, like, “Oh, wait. I don’t understand why you think this.” And suddenly you brain is like, “Here’s a reason why they think it. It’s because they’re dumb,” and then we believe that, and that’s a strange bias that we do because we can’t read minds. We have to fill in the gaps there. But we could also ask the question to fill in the gaps, and especially if they’re right there in front of us. So, that really is on my mind recently.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, and a perfect segue to your recently released book Why Are We Yelling: The Art of Productive Disagreement because I think that’s quite one way that things go sour real fast is if you say, “Well, the reason that person thinks that is because he or she is a moron, or a racist, or hates me.” That gets you into some trouble. So, maybe let’s zoom out a little bit and, say, sort of what’s the big idea behind your latest work here Why Are We Yelling and, yeah, let’s get oriented that way?

Buster Benson
Yeah. So, similar to the cognitive bias approach, I felt like there’s all these books about negotiation and rationality and persuasion that were really useful in particular context, like work, or sales, or debate in the courtroom, that kind of stuff. But there weren’t that many ways to really make it real for my everyday life. Like, what’s going to help me have a better conversation with my friend over a meal? What’s going to help me have better conversations as I’m going on a walk with my son? These things where we don’t have the tools, we haven’t been really taught how to have these conversations in a productive way.

And so, we resort to just these trial and error attempts, and some of us have luckily stumbled into the right approaches and some of us didn’t, and there’s no real way to help people develop that skill. So, that was my impetus for writing this, first, for myself, because I really need these skills and I want to synthesize it in a way that made sense to me, but also for other people because I feel like more and more these days we just feel stuck and frustrated with the way that our conversations are going.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love it if, do you have any data that sort of tell that story? Like, I’m wondering if things sure seem nastier and more hostile these days and less productive in our disagreements, but do you have any proof?

Buster Benson
Yeah, there’s proof everywhere you look. So, depending on which avenue or domain of the world you want to look, there’s different ones. So, one of them I found is that, in a work setting, for example, which is one of the safest ones, 85% of people believe that they have some crucial information about the business, about the company, and they’re not talking about it because they don’t want to start an argument. And so that’s where conflict avoidance has really risen to the surface.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! Woo, I’m sorry. That’s huge.

Buster Benson
That’s shocking, right?

Pete Mockaitis
That is just… that’s huge. I think that’s like the core of so much dysfunction right there, it’s like, “I’ve got some info and I’m not telling you not because I’m diabolically trying to sabotage anything but just because, oh, man, this is going to cause a big old argument. I don’t want to deal with it.”

Buster Benson
Yeah, if you don’t feel it’s a safe environment to have disagreements or you don’t know how to have them, you’re not going to move forward and you’re not going to have that conversation, and that’s just going to linger and get worse, and eventually pop up in some other person’s lap. And this happens not only at work but obviously also in the political sphere. We don’t necessarily think that we’re trying to go out there and solve problems, where we all know what the problems are, and we’re just unhappy about it and yelling about it.

I think there’s ways that we can move away from this conflict avoidance stance, which turned out to be way more common than the unproductive disagreement stance. Most people are not having that many unproductive disagreements. They’ve given up and that’s even worse in some senses in terms of like, “Well, if you’ve already given up, how do we get you back in the game so that we can actually work through these problems?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, do tell. How do we do that? So, you’re feeling like, “Oh, that’s just going to cause a big argument. I’m not even going to bring it up, not even going to go there.” What’s sort of the next step?

Buster Benson
Yeah. So, one of the first things we need to do is remember that other people are humans and other people are as complex as us. So, to do this, when we go into a situation where we’re feeling like, “I think that they aren’t as smart as I am, or I think they don’t get it,” that’s an opportunity to fill in the gaps with real information. So, having someone in front of you that has all these information and perspective is actually a blessing. You can ask them, “Tell me, I just don’t get how this works for you. Like, what’s the story? What’s the background? How did this happen? Help me get there. Help me see the world through your perspective,” just because that’s information that we don’t have, and until we have it, we just feel confused and baffled. And it’s frustrating. It doesn’t feel good.

So, use these people that you might normally think of as opponents or enemies as a source of information that can help you feel a little bit more relaxed about the world if you can understand their perspective better. And that’s really the first step is just think about, “What are the openings? What are the stories we can glean from each other in a safer setting to have a wider perspective of the world?” Not necessarily to change minds or anything, but just to see it from one more, a little bit higher on the plane of perspectives so that we can see, “This person exists because this happened to them and this is their story, and I’m like this because this happened to me, and I could see now why we both exist in the same world, and we both think we’re doing the right thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, so when you say, “How do you get here?” you don’t specifically mean, I don’t know, why you did the project a certain way, but, like, their whole life backstory, history picture.

Buster Benson
Yeah, we oftentimes resort to what are the facts, what are the evidence. The facts and evidence are there to prop up our story once we already have it for the most part. So, asking for that is really about continuing the information, bludgeoning, you find the gotcha information. The stories behind the facts are the real reason we believe things, and that’s what we should go after because those are rich. Those are really filled with interesting detail, they’re exciting to hear about, they’re new. And our brains are trained to really delight in hearing these kinds of stories. That’s why all of fiction is story-based, it’s not about, “Here’s more facts about the world.” Worldbuilders spend all the time telling you about the small details. You get bored real quick, you want the story, you want the plot.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, could you maybe give us some examples of what a rich backstory sounds like, and how it can color, shape and inform a position or an opinion, and how a different backstory would give rise to maybe a contrary opinion or view?

Buster Benson
Yeah, so I try to tackle gun control in one of the chapters and I tried a bunch of different things online and in person. What ended up working was having a salon or a potluck in my house and inviting a bunch of people that have different experiences with guns. And we went around the table and each shared their own personal story. There’s someone who was a former NRA member. There’s someone that had a bunch of assault rifles. There’s someone who just bought a shotgun, and there’s a bunch of people that have never fired a gun before. There are people that have had suicide in their family. There’s people that had violence in their family.

And so, just going around, and saying, “Oh, wait, I know some of you, I don’t know some of you, but I don’t know any of these stories.” And the variety was just so eye-opening just to begin with, and that was really great. But the interesting part came when we decided to figure out, “What’s a policy we can all come to? What policy we think is going to have the biggest impact on gun violence. And let’s come up with proposals and then we’ll tear them apart together just for fun and we’ll see where it goes. Because if we all have the answers, this should be easy.”

What ended up happening as we all went into small groups and came back and now had proposals, and they were all terrible ideas. We all found flaws instantly. And this was eye-opening not because we learned that we didn’t know a whole lot about this issue but the fact that, “Oh, wait, this is complicated. And my simplistic position on it going in is incorrect.”

And that’s not necessarily changing your mind, but saying, “Okay. Well, in order to really do justice to this problem, I’m going to have to really know a lot more than I currently do.” And that can be both exciting and, if that’s not what you want to do, you could be like, “Well, I don’t have time to do that, but I know that the answer is out there somewhere. I hope we can facilitate conversations because we don’t have the answers right now.” And that’s an example where I came in with a really narrow perspective and came out thinking, “Oh, wait. Yeah, this is more complicated than I thought. I shouldn’t feel as self-righteous about this as I did before.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate that example, and I guess I’m always a little skeptical when some people seem to know everything about everything, it’s like, “You know…” Oh, I forgot who said that quote but it said, “Some people are more sure of everything than I am of anything.”

Buster Benson
That’s very true. That’s one of the biases, right? Overconfidence is a big chunk of them, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. So, that’s, well, in a way that’s a “call me an optimist.”  I mean, in a way, that’s sort of discouraging, like, “Oh, man, this problem is going to be not resolved quickly because of its difficulty and complexity, but my optimism says okay.” It sounds like some people had some epiphany, some awakening, some understanding about other people’s viewpoints and were enriched as a result by being able to engage in those conversations and, well, I don’t know if you’re editing the story, but it doesn’t sound like anyone just started screaming someone else’s head off and stormed out.

Buster Benson
No, definitely not. Having food there also helped a lot because food calms you down, it sort of regulates your blood pressure a little bit more, and there’s also this culture element, like, if you’re sharing food with someone, you sort of see them as a peer or as a member of your tribe more than if you’re shouting at them over Facebook comments or something like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so there’s one quick tip right there. Hey, food is handy. I guess I’m wondering what are sort of like the general principles such that we can disagree with folks and walk away sort of with our relationship, at least, not harmed but hopefully improved? I think that’s sort of challenging is folks believe and sometimes it’s true that, “Boy, if I go here and we argue about this, they’re going to respect you less, or I’m going to respect them less, or it’s going to get ugly in one way or another.” So, how do we not have that happen?

Buster Benson
Yeah, it’s intimidating because it is a hard skill to acquire and a hard skill to practice, and if we’re not aware of where our skills are, we’ll oftentimes put ourselves in situations that are above our skill level. And so that’s why I advocate, let’s just start with small steps and get better in safer places and then move into harder ones, more challenging ones.

So, one way to think about it is that we don’t need to answer every problem. We can think of the world as a bunch of problems that are happening, a bunch of different people that are out there. And what is the one, or the two, or the three, that we are most well-suited to really deeply immerse ourselves in, understand from the inside, and to proactively act on?

And the feeling of when things happen in the news, and you have the answer in your head, and you’re like, “Why doesn’t everyone just do this thing that’s obvious to me?” That feeling goes away when you start to understand some of the problems deeply and you can respect that there’s probably more complexity going on.

And, secondarily, it helps us propose that we do have unproductive disagreements more often because unless someone is thinking about this and working on it, nothing is going to happen and this problem is just going to get worse. So, this mix of, “What is going to help me feel better? What’s going to lower my anxiety about just watching the news, or reading the news, or having family dinners?” Part of that is just being okay with this ambiguity of like, “These problems are harder than I thought they were.” But also, what can we do to make each other better at having these conversations?

First, we have to know what that means for ourselves but, secondly, we have to respect each other and help people get there because nobody taught us this, we don’t learn this in school, we don’t learn it at work. Yeah, it’s something that we should all be better at.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, when it comes to developing these skills, I mean, what are some of the practices, or action steps, or things we should do to get them going?

Buster Benson
The easiest one just to begin with is just to want to do it. And I think it sounds sort of trite but we go about most of our day in a pre-reactive mode where we’re like, “Okay, this bad thing happened. I’m going to go attack that. This bad thing happened, I’m going to go attack that,” versus like, “Okay. Well, what would it take for me to just pay more attention to what my reactions to these things and to think about if I did the same over and over again, things aren’t going to get better, so let’s just pay attention to it.”

I say, like, starting a disagreement journal is a great way to do that, if you’re into journaling, or just like talking to yourself and going on a walk, and like, “Let’s go back in that conversation and think about where I went off the tracks, where the thing that triggered me made me change from one that’s like asking open questions to one that was more like defensive, or even insulting, or whatever it is, and see what was it that was important to me that got challenged?” And maybe even follow up with that person the next day and say, “Hey, remember that conversation we had? I realized after the fact that I felt a little bit threatened because this is a value I held. Do you have that value? Is this something that you are really thinking about? What is your perspective on that?” And you might be able to use that as a bridge because there might be something, “Well, yeah, of course, that’s important. But I was talking about this other thing, completely different from that topic. And I’m sorry for lashing out.”

And so, you can use this as a way to go back after the fact and repair that relationship, and then use it as a way to connect it and make sure that the next one is a little bit better because it’s really hard at the moment to know what to do until you’ve sort of reflected on things a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’ve got, specifically, an eight-step process here to become better at productive disagreements. Could you give us perhaps a one-ish minute or less on each of these steps?

Buster Benson
Sure. So, there are eight of them. Each one of them is about summarizing a big field of work. So, the first one is watch how anxieties sparks. This is what we’ve been talking about mostly, like this mindfulness about that moment that you switch from the calm, curious, open person to the defensive, sort of protective person, and sort of really understand that, where that switch happens, and use that as a way to identify your own values.

Number two is to talk to your internal voices. We all have inherited these, some voices that are very authoritarian, some voices that are very calm and reasonable, and some voices that are like, “Screw this. I’m out, then I flip the table and leave,” and I call it, that’s the conflict avoidance one. And it’s different in each of our heads, and we oftentimes think these thoughts and then we speak them out loud. And so, our internal voices turn into external voices.

And to understand why we say things the way we do, we can sort of go back and think about, “Where does that voice come from? Who in my life am I mimicking in that voice? Do I still need it?” and think about that. That’s cognitive behavioral therapy and sort of the many-minds theory of like, “Oh, gee,” which is really interesting. It can help us tease apart, like, “These thoughts aren’t as necessary.”

Number three is developing honest bias which is sort of the further step past the poster you have. Not only like the what are the biases but what do we do with them? How can we use this information to have better conversations? And I think developing honest bias is the key here. Rather than trying to un-bias yourself, or point out the bias in other people, look for the damage that it does and repair that because that’s tangible, it’s practical, it’s right in front of you, it’s something that you can actually have impact on, versus trying to change the wiring in someone’s mind that’s going to be really, really hard and frustrating.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, to do that, are you just sort of identifying, like, “Hey, this is some things that show up for me in bias”? Or what are you doing exactly?

Buster Benson
Depending on what the situation is, you can say, like, in the work situation, we have this hiring flow that is biased towards candidates that come out of Ivy League colleges. Just fix that and say, like, “Okay, who knows who set that up and whose bias was the one that designed it?” But you can actually fix the process itself. The same goes for if you’re looking for a new job, you’re looking for a new place to live, or any decision that you’re trying to make, you can say, like, “Okay. Well, regardless of what my initial state is, I might seek out familiar things, or I might seek out a safe thing, or I might seek out the thing that makes me look the best.”

What options did you undervalue that you can add back onto the list before you make a decision? And so, there’s these 13 questions you can ask yourself about, like, “Am I favoring the bizarre, interesting, adventurous answers over the seemingly boring ones, even though the boring ones might be better answers for me?” and just add them back on the list, and then look at them altogether. So, you don’t have to change your bias, you can just fix the results of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Thank you.

Buster Benson
So, number four is speaking for yourself. This is one that we do all the time where we speak for others, right? So, we will say, “That party is doing this for these reasons,” or, “That person is evil because they think this.” Rather than doing that, try to invite them into the conversation and ask them to speak for themselves, and also share your perspective from your own stance rather than trying to imagine what they’re thinking. That’s sort of what we talked about at the very beginning.

And it’s a hard habit to break because, I know, speaking from experience, we are just so used to using group labels, and saying, “This group of people has this intention, is doing these things for these reasons,” and we don’t question where we got that from, because we obviously can’t read their minds, and we don’t talk to them a whole lot. So, how can we know? Let’s go ask them directly. It also shows that these groups aren’t as homogenous as we think they are. There’s a whole lot of variation in our own groups and there’s a whole other variation in the other groups, so you can find reasonable people on both sides.

Number five is asking questions that spark surprising answers. There’s a whole list of questions you can just put in your back pocket and pull out right when you’re feeling flooded, you’re like, “Okay. Well, I don’t know how to address this. Okay, I’m going to ask a question,” because we oftentimes tend to ask questions that are black and white but are very limited in possibilities, and we often already prejudged many of the answers to the questions we ask. So, those aren’t going to return a lot of information about the other person that could surprise you. So, open questions, where no matter what they say, it’s going to be interesting and surprising. I think that that’s a better approach, and we can just make a list of these and use them.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us one or two right now? I like that way of articulating it, asking questions that invites surprising answers. So, that’s even a little bit more than just not just yes or no, but it gets you thinking about even better questions. So, can you lay a couple on us?

Buster Benson
Yes. So, one that I use a lot is just like, “What am I missing about your perspective that would help me understand you better?” I like to say, “How has this belief been useful for you? Who do you admire?” All these questions are ways of pivoting into their perspective and seeing the world through their eyes, which is always surprising.

In fact, the more different, the more bizarre they are in terms of their worldview, the more surprising it’ll be. And this is a self-reinforcing system because if you do this once, and you get an interesting answer, you’re going to like it. It’s going to be entertaining and meaningful to you. You’re going to want to do it again. You’re going to now have more information to ask even more interesting questions. So, it builds on itself in a really great way.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is fun. I guess I’m thinking about things like, “What TV or movie character do you most sort of relate, connect, identify with?”

Buster Benson
Oh, exactly, yeah. There are so many ways to bring your own personality into the questions and ask the ones that you think has some overlap with you, because you can embed that shared interest in a question, and say, like, “Hey, we both like this story. Let’s talk about it,” and through that, talk about the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Very good. What’s next?

Buster Benson
So, sixth is to build arguments together, and this is an interesting one. It requires the other, speaking for yourself, asking questions that spark surprising answers, building arguments together means, “Let’s put aside whether or not your argument is right. Let’s just work on it together and make it as good as possible.” Because any argument, any position, has a best version of itself. Even something like the flat-earth theory of the world has a best argument for it.

And it’s interesting because by bringing yourself to this question, you can be creative, you can sort of start building something that you may never have thought about before. And flat earth is sort of, in the topic, but like to just illustrate the point, it’s just interesting to build that up and think about, “Okay. Well, I obviously have a lot of problems with this. I can help you address these. Like, let’s find the answers to all my questions, and then you’ll potentially will build up to a point that you can convince me from this argument, then that’s a win-win as well.”

So, it’s one way of just turning the conversation from combative to collaborative that can turn out to be really fun. You do have to have some trust built in there because you don’t want to come across as, like, “Oh, I’m going to go in and let’s play blocks and treat your argument as a game.” But assuming that you can pull it off in terms of like, “Yeah, I really do want to build this up for you, and I want the best person and the best people to represent your position so I understand it,” then it can lead to really interesting places.

Pete Mockaitis
Gotcha.

Buster Benson
Seven is cultivating neutral spaces. This is one of the hardest ones because think that arguments exists in the land of abstractions and ideas. Really, they exist in the world of words, sounds, body language, lighting, and power dynamics, and rooms, and sort of it’s really important to think about, “Which ideas are allowed on the table in this conversation? What are the power dynamics between us that maybe I’m not going to share everything because I know that if you don’t like it, you can fire me?” And then there’s also the question of, “Who can be in this conversation in the first place? Who can enter the room? Can I leave the conversation if I feel like it’s no longer being productive?”

It brings to the surface a lot of the power dynamics that have to happen. And these have a material impact on the success of the conversation. You can always turn something that’s really not a neutral space into something that’s more neutral. And we do this instinctively by saying, “Let’s go on a walk,” or, “Let’s go get dinner tomorrow,” or, “Let’s do something where the dynamic is different and the space feels a little better.”

Pete Mockaitis
Or if there’s sort of anonymous inputs in terms of we don’t know whose name is on that idea.

Buster Benson
Right. Exactly. And there’s people, you know, we don’t even see faces, or there’s no accountability, and people can drop in and drop out whenever they want. That’s another thing to consider especially online where these things happen, yeah.

And the last tip is to accept reality and then participate in it. And this is the most abstract one, but, really, it’s a call to this desire that we shouldn’t try to reject the world that exists and just refuse to participate in it until it is more likable. It is the way it is, and the only thing we can do is be a positive or a negative influence within it.

And I see disagreement as this opportunity for us all to say, “Okay, we’re not going to be unscathed, and we’re not going to be on the sidelines just critiquing all the bad things happening. Let’s get into the mix. Let’s be part of the solution. Let’s even be willing to be vulnerable and compromise in those situations and admit how we’re complicit in them,” because that’s the arena that these can be resolved in, and that’s really the way to participate in the most productive way.

So, this idea, like we can just exile, or censor, or ban all the things we don’t like is the opposite. Let’s bring everyone in and let’s figure it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so much good stuff here. And as you kind of walk through these eight, what really stuck with me, or struck me the most, is that “speak for yourself” bit. And I remember, this will be super quick, but, boy, when we were closing on our house, we had what we call split close where this other side was in a different room with their team and they were talking through the cellphone to, say, our lawyer. And there was this one point, like, “Oh, a little bit.”

And so, our lawyer was, say, “Well, hey, we would like this and that as a result of this,” and then she hangs up the phone and says, “Yeah, they basically say, yeah, they think this is a shakedown.” And then our real estate agent says, “A shakedown? For them to impute our integrity in this way,” and it was so funny, like they didn’t use the word shakedown. Our lawyer summarized for them using the word shakedown, and then the real estate agent took Umbridge at the words they never said, and I was just like, sometimes lawyers, not to point fingers, they come back and stuff happens.

Buster Benson
And this happens all the time, the tiny small steps can really derail a conversation so quickly, so quickly that we don’t even notice that it happened. So, yeah, that’s really a good example of just how easy it is to go on the wrong direction. But there are ways to notice them and say, “Okay. Well, let’s hear it from them. Can we just confirm that this is what’s happening?” because there’s more to be gained by a positive outcome for everyone than to just leave the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
And, speaking of that, well, I guess a shakedown is probably not one of them. But I want to get your take on some common phrases that can show up in arguments that tend to make things unproductive in a hurry and show up a lot, and some superior alternatives to those.

Buster Benson
Yeah, and there are just so many. Choose a genre of conversation that we can tease apart a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. We are professionals in a workplace considering what is the best option to complete an objective in terms of, “Should we invest in A, B, C, or D?”

Buster Benson
Right. Okay, so many things there, yeah. One of them you might be familiar to is, “Let’s take this offline,” is a really, really common one in the world of, okay, that just basically means, “There’s too many people in the room. We want to have this decision between a smaller group of people. And I’m going to decide who those people are.” That’s unproductive. I think that there are ways to identify the goal instead of just saying that the entire conversation should be taken offline. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that. But there’s also, let’s see…

Pete Mockaitis
That makes a lot of sense in terms of it’s quite a power grab, really.

Buster Benson
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay. You can just unilaterally declare that these topics are not going to be discussed here and, apparently, at an arbitrary later time with a group of people to be determined, it may or may not be discussed. Thanks.

Buster Benson
Yeah. And it is a tool that works but it’s also a tool that’s slightly dysfunctional if it’s misused. So, I think that a lot of these tools, they have good intentions. They’re like, “Okay. Well, we’re not ever going to go around the room and get everyone’s opinion, and then figure out what this is going to be”  because we think that that’s the only other option. But there are ways to move fast and make decisions and include people at the same time. It’s not a tradeoff you have to make, as much as it feels like that in the moment sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. And do you have, could you share, what are your favorite approaches for pulling that off?

Buster Benson
Yeah. So, I was thinking of, as a product leader, I have many projects where your team is spending months working on something, and at the very last minute, the leadership is like, “Oh, I don’t know about this. Have you considered this possible downside?” And usually you have but you only have a very limited amount of time to talk about this. And so, this can turn a project from launching to taking months and months and months.

And then they’re like, “Let’s talk to more people. Let’s take this offline. Let’s revisit this in a month,” or whenever. One way around that is to say, “Okay. Well, let’s just go through worst case and best case scenarios of this so that we can mitigate those possibilities that are bad and sort of look forward to the ones that are good,” because then they’re heard. You can say, like, “I think the worst-case scenario is that all of our advertisers, they’re going to leave, or our users are going to revolt.” And they can say, “Okay. Well, here is how we’ll know if that’s happening. We’re going to launch it with a smaller group of people. We’re going to roll it out slowly. And if this starts happening, we’re going to stop. But we’re going to start going and find out if that’s true or not.”

So, trimming it from like, “Is this going to be a problem?” to, “Let’s find out if it’s a problem as quickly as possible, and keep the ball moving forward,” can save months and months of time in a lot of situations.

And that could be used in a lot of situations where people are risk-averse and feel like they don’t want to move forward until they feel more confident. But the way you feel more confident is by learning, and so there’s ways to make a prediction, “Let’s learn, let’s move forward. And if it turns out that I’m right, great. If it turns out that you’re right, we’ve learned something. Either way it’s going to be okay and we’re both going to win.” So, that’s really one of the simplest ways to move things forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And, quickly, I also want to get your take on is there any best practices, approaches, or tips you’d suggest for when we’re disagreeing with our boss or someone who outranks us?

Buster Benson
Yeah. So, I always like to turn it into, “What would the evidence be of…?” especially with power dynamics, there’s like, “Do this,” right? And you’re like, “Oh, but that’s a bad idea,” or, “I don’t want to do that,” or, “I’m not good at that,” or sometimes it’s a judgment saying, “You’re not good at this,” or, “You’re not the right person for this,” or, “Your promotion is not going to happen.” Those kinds of things, that are really about a judgment of the worth of something, sometimes you, sometimes your work.

The way to turn that into productive disagreement is to say, like, “Okay. What would you see in the world if I was performing at a higher quality? Or what evidence would there be if I was ready for a promotion? Or how do you see it?” Just so it turns it from something that’s a judgment call into something that can be found in the world. And that’s also a great way to summarize what they’re really trying to say, which is like, they’re going to ultimately going to use signals in the world to make decisions, and it brings clarity to that.

So, turning it from something subjective to objective, saying that in the future if you had done these three things, or if you had spoken for the company and those things that happened, then I would sort of think that you’re prepared for the next step. Versus, like, “Oh, you’ll know when you see it,” or, “I’ll let you know,” kind of thing which is really vague, ambiguous, and can only increase your anxiety over time.

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

Buster Benson
Yeah. So, the last thing I’ll say is that the real challenge here is not to solve all disagreements, be like a perfect disagree-r, but just to have one or two to experience what that’s like, how enjoyable they can be, what it’s like to actually use disagreement to connect, what it’s like to actually learn a bigger perspective through disagreement, because if we can feel that feeling and sort of see that as the antidote to the anxiety we feel, then we could begin to expect it from our leaders, from our politicians, and the world more broadly, because right now we just don’t expect a whole lot from people because we haven’t experienced it for ourselves. So, taking baby steps and saying, “Okay. I just want to feel this and sort of see it in other people as well,” in the long run is the challenge here, and my hope that this sort of brings out.

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

Buster Benson
So, not to be too trite, but, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is a Gandhi quote, but I think that that is one that has really influenced my approach to the world. It goes back to this accepting and participating. Don’t just be the critic. Be in the mix. Get all messy in the mud and get something done. If that’s what you want everyone else to do, then you got to do it too.

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

Buster Benson
In the news recently, I saw that this Stanley Milgram experiment has been debunked, which is really interesting to me. The interesting thing I think with experiments that I love the ones that had been falsified just because it helps us understand science as an evolving process. And one of the worst biases out there is publication bias where we only look at the studies that sound good as a headline, and that can sort of validate something about our lives.

So, I love any experiment that feels like it should be right that gets disproven just to add a little bit of that complexity back into our conversation. So, we can’t just listen to what feels good in our studies. So, Stanley Milgram is the prisoner experiment is going to be one that I would recommend reading or listen to, but the fact that it was revised and that we’re now questioning this is really interesting to me.

Pete Mockaitis
We’re talking about the authority with the shocks?

Buster Benson
Yeah, the one where you would zap people until they were basically dead because you’re the authority.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I want to see the latest on this. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Buster Benson
Favorite book right now. There is this book by Jenny Odell called How to Do Nothing, and it is just a delightful book that is both meditative and practical and rich in imagery in stories and stuff. She talks about how to live in a world where everything is trying to make us more productive, including my book, and how to just maintain integrity and dignity in that sort of high-pressure environment.

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

Buster Benson
My pen and paper are the ones that I go by the most. To add something a little bit more quirky, I’ve been really interested in the art of tarot decks recently, and I’ve been using this as a way to add symbolism and interesting this to my life.  We just have these tendencies to get into these routines and ruts where things can get really dry and sort of abstract.

Bringing back art into our work is really important to just remember that there’s a creative force that goes into the things that we do. Not necessarily advocating for the pseudoscience of tarot but I’m saying that just seeing the magician and the empress and the hanging man next to your desk, and say, “Okay, yeah. We live in a really rich world,” has been really helpful for me.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit that helps you be awesome at your job?

Buster Benson
So, my favorite habit is private journaling. I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s morning pages, Julia Cameron wrote a book called The Artist’s Way. It’s like this brain dump. Anytime that my brain is tangled up and I’m not into open question, I’ll just type furiously until all the knots get worked out. And it’s been a really, really helpful tool for me over the years to figure that out through that because, otherwise, you need to go on a long walk or ask someone out to coffee and talk about it. But this is a way that’s always handy and you can always use it to figure something out for yourself.

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

Buster Benson
BusterBenson.com is my website, there’s all kinds of weird things, and @buster on Twitter is where I live on the internet.

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

Buster Benson
Yeah. Have one proactive disagreement about something that you feel is important, and don’t keep it bottled up, and see how it goes. And be patient with yourself if it didn’t go right the first time.

Pete Mockaitis
Buster, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks. And keep on having some lovely productive disagreements.

Buster Benson
Thank you so much. It has been a joy.

Nov 22
0

516: Making Difficult Conversations Easier with David Wood

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

David Wood says: "The tough conversations we haven't had form the boundaries of our world."David Wood shares his process for making difficult conversations more manageable.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What makes difficult conversations so difficult
  2. The four-step blueprint for tackling difficult conversations
  3. The simplest way to receive more quality feedback

About David

After life as a consulting actuary to Fortune 100 Companies, David built the world’s largest coaching business, becoming #1 on Google for “life coaching.”

He wants every human to play the best game they possibly can in work AND life and to have zero-regrets when they die. David coaches both high performing leaders, and soon-to-be-released prison inmates, to higher levels of Truth, Daring and Caring.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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David Wood Interview Transcript

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

David Wood
Hey, my pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to kick it off if you could share an interesting story about some of your work with people in prison.

David Wood
Well, I’m moved by their stories, and I’m particularly moved by some of the tough conversations that they need to have. There’s one inmate who we interviewed. We took in a film crew and we interviewed her, and she was part of a robbery. She didn’t actually do the robbery but she conspired to plan the robbery, and they didn’t follow the plan. They did something else, and someone got shot and killed. So, she got sentenced to 25 years in prison for planning a robbery whose plan wasn’t followed.

And one of the toughest conversations of her life that was coming up when I spoke to her, and I haven’t spoken to her since she had it, was she said, “How do you explain to the widow of your victim how sorry you are? How do you say ‘I understand that your kids are now suicidal, and you’ve lost your husband, and it was all because of something that I set in motion’? How do you explain how sorry you are?” And I didn’t really have any answer for that. So, that’s one story I’m moved by. I’m moved by many of the inmates and what they’re facing on a daily basis.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. And so, in terms of your life’s work and expertise, what is it that you think that causes you to return this population again and again?

David Wood
I keep wondering why I go back into prison. I think, initially, it was a fascination with confronting my own freedom because I think that we take so many things for granted, and I wanted to see what was it like to go in and serve this underprivileged population. And then when I got in there, I found out how grateful they were. They were really humble, and they were really listening. They wanted to learn, “How am I going to communicate with a potential employer? How am I going to handle tough conversations with my family while I’m in prison and then when I get out since they’re blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong?”

So, they’re listening, and they want to know. And when we leave there, they’re just so grateful. They said, “A lot of people won’t come and spend the time with us. Thank you so much.” So, it gives me a chance. A lot in my life is going really well and it gives me a chance to do some service.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, can you zoom out a little bit? I want to hear a little bit about your philosophy and organization, play for real, what does it mean?

David Wood
Well, I believe we’re playing a game. I know not everybody has that viewpoint but I think life is the greatest game there is and the stakes are very high. Literally, we can die. So, the stakes don’t get much higher than that. But if you don’t know that you’re playing a game, what can happen, let’s say in your job, you can get tense, you can start to feel overwhelmed, you can start to get a bit crabby and snap at people because, now, you’re stressed and you’ve forgotten that you’re playing a game. So, I’d like everybody to be able to tap into the flow of life by remembering this is a very high-stakes game.

But I don’t mean we’re being frivolous about it and we’re just, say, dancing through the daisies with butterflies floating around our hair and not a care in the world. I’m saying, let’s play the game but let’s play it like we mean it. Let’s play it as if we may not get another chance to be reincarnated and live a second life. Let’s play but let’s play for real. So, to me, that means let’s try and live so that on our deathbed we will have zero regrets and say we absolutely gave our job and our relationships and our life everything that we possibly could.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. And so, we’re going to spend most of our time talking about how real conversations are difficult conversations play into it. But just to get oriented to the broad picture, you lay out four particular obstacles or enemies of playing for real. So what are those if you can give us the quick version for how we overcome those?

David Wood
Yeah. So, one thing that people are missing is real goals. They’re going through life but they haven’t actually set goals to light them up. So, that’d be the first thing that’s missing. The second thing, suppose you have goals, you know where you’re heading, but not everybody sits down and creates a strategic plan, and says, “This is exactly what needs to happen for me to achieve those goals.” So, we’re just talking about a lack of a strategic plan.

The third one is there’s no real action. It’s one thing to have a plan, it’s another thing to implement the damn plan. So many of us get distracted by Facebook messages and text messages and people coming and knocking on the door that we don’t actually take action on the things that we say matter. So, lack of real action is the third one.

And then the fourth one is lack of real growth. And I’ve identified three values that I found critical to up-leveling in life and business, and that’s increasing your truth, increasing your levels of daring, and increasing your levels of caring. So, by addressing these four, we can actually create real goals, we can create a real plan, we can get in real action. And by increasing levels of truth, daring, and caring, we can actually have real growth in our life. And if you follow all four of those, then I say that leads to a regret-free life.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that makes a lot of sense to me in terms of, yeah, I can see those four things need to be in place to move toward really cool stuff that matters. And if we increase the truth and daring, that’s going to certainly help you out there. Now, I guess I have a bit of a picture or assumption on how daring and caring apply and how they’re special. But could you expand upon increasing truth? What does that mean and how is it done?

David Wood
Right. Well, let’s say, this is about being awesome at your job, right? So, if you want to be awesome at your job, let’s look at how you can increase your levels of truth. Now, if you’re not speaking up and talking about something that doesn’t work for you, then you’re hurting yourself and you’re hurting the team. So, let’s say Bill, over in accounting, is doing something that’s actually slowing down your job, and you stay silent. Well, that doesn’t really help anybody. So, by increasing our levels of truth, we can start to speak up about what I need, about what the team needs, and about what the company needs. It might be that you need a pay raise, and so while you’re sharing that with your boss, you’re increasing your level of truth.

And I actually have a secret mission. I want everybody in the world to increase their levels of personal responsibility, increase their levels of agency so that we’re speaking up and we’re causing the matter instead of just being passive or, even worse, complaining or gossiping. So, that’s an example of how we might increase truth.

Now, to increase daring, I think you can start to see how it goes hand in hand. For you to speak up and be the squeaky wheel at work, it might take some courage to go to your boss and say, “May I have more money?” or, “Can I get a transfer to this environment?” or, “Hey, I think I’m being discriminated against sexually in the workplace.” All of these things take daring to speak up. Also, it’s daring to say, “Can I have that Japanese account?” or to say to a prospective customer, “How about you sign up for a year instead of one month?” So, those are just some examples of the daring.

And then caring, you can care for your fellow workmates and actually care that they do a good job, and that they’re doing well, and that they’re feeling appreciated. You can care for your direct reports. You can care for the relationships between you and your customers. You can care for your personal relationships and nurture your relationship with your kids, with your parents, with your spouse, and you can also practice self-care, because burnout’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the workplace. And if we’re not taking care of our nutrition, and our rest, and our exercise, then, eventually, we are going to burn out and it’s going to whack us with a big stick.

So, does that answer your question of, “How do we increase levels of truth, caring, and caring?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so I’ve got a broad picture for how that unfolds there. So, now, yeah, let’s just talk, when it comes to pulling all that and you’ve got some conversations that are tricky, I mean, for starters… I made this more philosophical. Let’s see how it goes. What makes a difficult conversation difficult in the first place?

David Wood
Fear of loss. We’re usually worried about losing something. So, a difficult conversation at work would be, again, “May I have a pay raise?” We might be worried about annoying our boss and getting cut out of the next project, or maybe the boss says, “You know, we really don’t have the budget to support your salary, and you’ve just reminded me. You’re fired.” Or, let’s suppose, with our partner, a really tough conversation can be a confession, “Hey, I kissed someone and broke an agreement three years ago, and I want to come clean about it.” We could lose that relationship. So, fear of loss is one of the biggest things that make something a tough conversation.

The other thing, which I think is linked to this, is vulnerability. We can’t control a tough conversation. We can’t control the other person’s reaction if they get upset, if they get defensive, we can’t control what they do. We can’t even control how the conversation goes so we’re stepping into vulnerability to have a tough conversation. And I can understand why a lot of people might want to just sweep that under the carpet.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s why it’s sort of tricky. So, then how do we go about having these conversations effectively?

David Wood
Well, I have a four-step blueprint. And, by the way, tough conversations, I’ve been interested in those for 10 years in helping my clients, but I only recently, but I realized how well they fit into truth, daring, and caring because it’s all about telling the truth. It takes a lot of daring to have a tough conversation, and it takes a lot of caring to do it right. So, I’ve been very excited when I realized, “Oh, this is a way I can express truth, daring, and caring in the world and one the ways that we can play for real.”

So, how we do it, as I have a four-step blueprint, and if you like, we can give listeners a download at the end of this so that they don’t have write down a whole bunch of notes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Let’s do that too. So, okay, four steps.

David Wood
Yeah, four steps. And if you like, we can use an example with an authority figure. So, it could be something that you want to say to your boss, or we had an example with one of the prison inmates, and she was saying, “When the guard was late to his shift, that meant that I couldn’t be where I needed to be in the prison, and I got chewed up by another guard, and it really impacted my life.” And she said, “How do I have that tough conversation with an authority figure who has the ability to make my life hell?” And anyone with a job knows that their boss has a lot of power over them financially, their work hours, a whole bunch of things. So, we can use that as an example perhaps.

Step one is you ask permission for the conversation. Don’t just launch into it. So, with this prison inmate, for example, she could say to the guard, “Excuse me, Mr. Smith, do you have just a few minutes for a quick conversation?” And this is a good point to share your hope for the conversation, and we’ll give listeners a worksheet as well. When they download the four-step worksheet blueprint as a worksheet so you can prepare for this, and that’s where you work out your hope.

Now, her hope was, “My hope is you can understand a little more about what it’s like to be an inmate and that, hopefully, that might influence some of your decisions in the future,” something like that. Or, “My hope is that my life might be a little bit easier if you understand a bit more what it’s like.”

And then, step two, this is where you can share your fear or concern. Now, I guarantee there’s a fear or concern or you wouldn’t be calling it a tough conversation. So, in her example, “I’m hesitant to bring this up because I don’t want to offend you. You might feel offended or defensive and you might not want to listen to me, and I might get in trouble.”

And then, step three, this is where you share the issue. And if you have a request from your worksheet, this is where you put it in the request. So, in her example, again, it might be something like, “When you were late, I got in a lot of trouble. I got chewed out and I couldn’t pick up my property, and it really had an impact. And my request is, to whatever extent you’re able to, if you could try and be on time, then I’d be really grateful.”

And then, step four, the last one, I think can be the most important. This is where you get curious and you listen and negotiate. We don’t want to have tough monologues. We want to have tough conversations. And this is also where caring comes in. So, it might look, in this example, something like, “I’m wondering how is it for you to hear that? Does that make sense? Does that sound workable? Do you have a better idea? I’d love to hear anything you’ve got to say,” because you don’t want to just dump this and then run. And you may find out, she may find that this corrections officer may have a better idea than she had. The corrections officer may be like, “Look, I’ll speak to the other CO and I’ll smooth things over for you,” or, “I can’t guarantee I’ll be on time but I’ll help you out if you get in trouble because of it.” We don’t know. But that’s the plan.

Step four is get curious, and then we listen and negotiate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yes. I like that. It makes sense. It’s handy when you sort of have, I don’t know, a preamble but you share those bits in advance. And I think it makes them more kind of sympathetic or appreciative that you’re a human being and you have some sensitivities and vulnerabilities and you’re not trying to attack them.

David Wood
Yes, that’s right. It’s relational and it’s vulnerable. It’s like, “Here’s my hope out of this, here’s my fear or concern out of this, I’m a real person. I’m kind of at my edge here.” It changes the whole space. And people are more, I find, they’re more likely to listen when you show a bit of vulnerability and let them know the context of what’s going on instead of just you working it out in your head, and then launching into a tough monologue trying to get what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s do another scenario here and I think this happens a lot at workplaces. Okay. Let’s say you are responsible for your project to get done and that has any number of dependencies from other departments which you don’t have really control or authority over those folks who need to provide key stuff or inputs for you to get the job done. And so you’ve got to do some of those prompts, like, “Hey, you didn’t give me your stuff when I needed it.” But I always found that tricky in environments, in terms of, “How do I do an appropriate follow-up and what are the prompts I should be using to get what I need without being sort of offensive or pestering?” Because I don’t want them to think like, “Who’s this guy and why is he always in my business pestering me non-stop?” So, yeah, there’s the scenario. Let’s walk through how’d you approach such conversations.

David Wood
Perfect example and very similar to this inmate who wanted something from someone else who had some authority, she couldn’t control it so it was really a request. And in giving that preamble, I think you’ve given all the answers we need. So, first step would be asking permission, right? We’re not going to dump it on someone. We’re going to say, “Hey, if you’ve got a few minutes to talk about this project,” and this is where you’ll sweep in your hope, “My hope is we can be more in sync as a team and to be honest that I’m going to look even better with my boss,” for example, right? I’m making that up, “But I probably want to look good with my boss. So, that’s my hope.”

“And then my fear, or my concern about bringing it up is I know you don’t report to me, I know it’s not your job to make me look good, and I don’t want to be too obnoxious. I don’t want to be stepping on your toes, and I don’t want to put you offside, so I’m a little hesitant to bring it up, but I think it’s worth talking about.” So, now, we’ve been real, we’ve shared a hope, we’ve shared a concern.

And then, step three, share the issue and include a request if you have one, “So, the issue is I would share the impact. When I get the material later than you said it’s coming, there’s a whole pipeline that gets messed up, and it ends up taking us longer, and then sometimes I get in trouble for it. That’s the impact. And so, my request is that if we can be more rigorous around our deadlines, and if you don’t think you can get it to me by Thursday, give me a firmer deadline of Monday. But if you say Thursday at 5:00 o’clock, my request is that we be a bit more rigorous with it. Do you think that would work?”

And now I’m already going to slip straight into number four, “What do you think about this? Have you got any other ideas? Because this isn’t quite working and I’d really like to find something that does work.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, defensiveness pops during the course of the conversation. Do you have some pro tips for navigating that?

David Wood
Yeah. And I like what you said, like, “I don’t want to be obnoxious. I don’t want to be nagging all the time.” So, I’ll share that concern and I’ll say, “How do I request things from you without being a nag? How do I do it? Do you have a suggestion for language? I’d really like your ideas on this because I’m a little bit stumped.” And then you work it out together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure. Now, can we talk about going first. I’ve got Stephen Covey in my head here now. You know, “Seek first to understand then be understood.” How do you think about that sequencing or timing of who’s going first, and when is it optimal?

David Wood
Yeah, yeah, great. I love that. So, in the download, you’ll get some pro tips. And one of the tips is if you find that the other person is not really listening, they’re just jumping in, so you say something like, “You know, if I get the things later than we said, then I said, ‘Oh, well, my boss was doing this, and blah, blah, blah,’” they’re not listening, then you could try some words like this, “Hey, I want to hear that, and I want to try and get this out in one go. Do you think you could give me just two minutes? And I think I can cover all the bases. And then I’d love to hear everything you’ve got to say. So, we’ll just take turns then. Is it okay if I go first?”

And if it’s not, “Okay, maybe you go first and I’ll listen first. I’m okay with that.” The main thing is that you take turns and that there’s actually a two-way communication instead of someone just getting triggered and kind of running the show. If that happens, make the request, “Can I go first? And if not, you go first.”

Can you say the question again about the sequence of timing?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. So, we talked about, “Can I go first?” and I’m thinking about Stephen Covey with one of those seven habits of seek first to understand then be understood. So how do you think about the timing, sequencing of who goes first, talking versus listening. And are there particular circumstances in which you recommend listening first or just how do you think about that?

David Wood
Well, I think it’s sometimes a matter of charge, like, “Who has the charge?” So, if you’re the one that has some emotional charge on something, and you’re a bit at your edge, you might just want to request permission, “Can we talk about this? Can I share this issue?” And if you a yes, go for it. And then find out their reaction. So, I think it makes total sense for you to go first.

If you think that they might have a bit of charge, let’s say that you think they’re really upset with you about something, then you might say to them, “Look, I want to have a conversation about this and I can go first if you like, or if you like, you go first and I’ll listen, and then we’ll switch.” So, you’d still ask permission for the conversation, then you might throw it up in the air. Because if they’ve got a lot of charge, then the chances are higher they’re going to get triggered, angry, defensive, upset, something like that, and I might want to preempt it and let them, just hear their issue first.

But sometimes you’re taking something to someone where you don’t even know if they’ve got an issue, so I don’t think we have to artificially try and get their side first. I think it’s fine to just lead in and see if there’s permission for you to share your side.

Pete Mockaitis
I got you. Thank you. And then in terms of sort of managing in your own head and the emotions in the midst of these conversations, anything you recommend on how you can do that well? So if you’re starting to freak out, do you have some tips? Or if you’re feeling a little scared, nervous, anxious, and some things show up that you weren’t expecting… What do you do?

David Wood
I can see why you’ve got so many reviews on your podcast. You ask really good questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you.

David Wood
So, yeah, we’re talking about some emotional regulation now. If you know that you’re going to have an issue, for example, I had a podcast host say, “How do I share with my mother who’s got Alzheimer’s and who’s dying? How do I share with her all the things that I’ve been disappointed about in my life? I want to have no secrets between my mother.” Now, that’s a tough conversation.

And one of the tips that I gave her was to talk it out first with a friend or even journal it. Like, get it out. Don’t take all your charge about your disappointment about how your mother raised you and dump it on your mother. Better to go through your worksheet, work out your hope, work out your fears, you might write down all your disappointments, talk them out with a friend, in this way you can release a lot of that emotional charge so that when you go into the live conversation, you can be more matter of fact and deal with the facts, say, “Yeah, I was disappointed about a few things. Here are a couple of the key ones. And now that I’ve talked it out with a friend, I’ve realized that you’re actually doing the best you could.”

Those kinds of insights can come out of doing this. And I’ve also, I had one client who’s a manager in a tech company, and she said, “I’m worried about this tough conversation with my staff. They’re going to give me feedback on my management style. What if I get triggered? What if I get defensive and shut down?” Which is a super smart thing to be aware of. So, I said, “Great. We’re going to practice it. I’m going to be your employee, and I’m going to give you feedback, and I’m not going to go very easy on you, and we’re going to see how you go.” So, she got to roleplay it. And I started easy, just with a few things, and she handled it really well. And then, finally, I said, “You know, basically, you’re just clueless.” And that was too much.

So, we found her edge and she shut down, and then we slowed down, and we worked through it, found out why she would shut down, and she learned a new language. She learned how to say, “Ouch! That hurt,” instead of pretending and covering it up. So, long answer to a short powerful question, you can roleplay it, and you can talk it out with your friends first to release a lot of that charge so that you’ll be more settled when you actually have it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is good. And while we’re talking about feedback and being on the other end of some of this, are there other perspectives in terms of, how can we be open to the feedback and encourage and receive it and put it to use all the more often?

David Wood
Well, one way, this might seem flippant, but one way that we can get good feedback more often is to listen to the feedback we get. Now, I’ll put myself up and confess straight away that this isn’t automatic for me. If someone says something that I receive as critical, my first thought might be to defend, “Well, the reason that happened was blah, blah, blah.” I’m not listening. I’m not listening to their experience. So, if you can catch yourself, you go, “Oh, wait a minute. I just reacted to that. Let me slow down and listen to this. All right, you’re saying when I deliver this late, it has an impact on you and you get in trouble with your boss. All right. So, what I need to do is to be better about managing my deadlines.”

Now, if I’m willing to actually listen to someone’s woe instead of just defending myself, they’re more likely to come to me next time and say, “Hey, you know that conversation went well. How about this one? Would you be willing to try this?” But how many people do you know at work who just, historically, have not been open to requests, or criticism, or feedback that’s less than glowing. I know people that I’m not going to give them any feedback because they’re bumpy and they’re just not open to it so I stop giving it to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally, yeah.

David Wood
Yeah, I’ve got this manager I was just talking about, she wants feedback. She wants to be a great manager and she knows to be a great manager she’s got to know if there’s a problem so she’s gone to each of the team members and said, “Would you be willing to tell me if there’s something I’m doing that’s not the best?” And she told them a story about her boss. She told her boss, “What could I do better?” The boss said, “Oh, everything is good. Everything is good. No, you’re doing great.”

Pete Mockaitis
What happens?

David Wood
And then when it came to review time, the boss said, “Well, here are five things you could’ve done better.” And she was naturally pissed. She’s like, “I wanted that feedback. I could’ve been better already.” So, she told that story to her staff to let them know that she really does value feedback, and to model for them what it’s like to actually request for feedback so that some of them could go, “Oh, same here. Let me know if I can do something better.” A real ninja move to cause some of that.

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

David Wood
Well, I like talking about my favorite things, so let’s shift gears.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, let’s do it. How about a favorite quote or something you find inspiring?

David Wood
Well, I’m going to quote myself because I said something a couple months ago and it stuck with me, and it feels so core to the work I’m doing. And what I said was, “The tough conversations we haven’t had form the boundaries of our world.” They literally form the boundaries of our reality. But the tough conversations we do have become the defining moments of our relationships, our career, and our lives.

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

David Wood
A favorite bit of research? Well, there’s an assistant professor on the East Coast of the U.S. who surveyed, I think, it was 150 hospice nurses to find out what people actually regret on their deathbed. You hear so much talk about, “Oh, on your deathbed, people wished they hadn’t spent so much time at the office, blah, blah, blah.” But where’s the research? Well, I’m telling you, there isn’t any. This guy has got the closest piece of research, it’s very hard to get to the actual people dying due to privacy laws and permissions at the hospital and family and all these things. I’ve tried. But he actually researched the nurses and found, say, the top five regrets of the dying. So, that’s one of my favorite pieces of research just because it’s the closest that exists to what I really want to see which is actually asking those who are dying.

Pete Mockaitis
And for those who haven’t seen the study, could you share a couple of them?

David Wood
Oh, being true to one’s self, that’s one. And I may not have the words right but being true to one’s self, speaking up for you instead of living other people’s dreams, that’s one. And I think an example of that would be telling people how much you love them.

And I can relate to that. When I imagine being on my deathbed, there’s a scan, and I’ve been near death. I’ve been sitting on a plane with the engine caught on fire, I’ve had my parachute collapse and head plummets towards the ground, and I’ve scanned, “Is there anything left? Is there anything left unsaid?” In fact, I turned to my partner, with the engine on fire, and said, “Well, good, Ray. Is there anything we haven’t said?” And we agreed we were solid. I want that experience for everybody, that you don’t die with anything left unsaid.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

David Wood
I’m a fan of The Work of Byron Katie. And so, I’m going to mention Loving What Is because it was my first introduction. I didn’t get a grasp for The Work from that book but it was what led me to go further with Katie and finally get a grasp on The Work. So, Loving What Is by Byron Katie will start to introduce you. This reminds me of a quote of hers which is one of my favorites, which is, “The worst thing that can happen to you is a thought.” Yeah, a whole gamechanger to start to realize that circumstances don’t give us our experiences of our life. It’s what we’re believing that gives us our experience of life. And Katie gives us a way to hack those painful thoughts to get to peace.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a favorite tool you’d recommend to people to be more awesome at their jobs?

David Wood
Yeah, I recommend the four-step blueprint for tough conversations which we’ll give your listeners in a few minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

David Wood
Ooh, I like something called somatic sequencing. It’s new. This is new for me. I’ve been running from a lot of the sensations in my body for years and years, and I believe this is what people pick up with cigarette, or they smoke, or they have a glass of wine. Or you take some medication to kind of numb ourselves, or watch TV. But I’ve been experimenting with a therapist in feeling the feelings. Like, I’ll go and lay down a special place in the house and I’ll be like, “What is happening in my body?” I’ll just feel it and I will try and welcome everything that’s happening. And that’s been a bit of a game changer for me. So, that’ll be my new favorite tool or practice.

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

David Wood
You can go to PlayForReal.life. At PlayForReal.life you can download the blueprint. If you are serious about up-leveling in career and life at the same time, then see if you qualify for a discovery session with me. If you do, I don’t charge for those sessions. And I have joined the ranks of the podcasters in the last week, Pete. And if you’d like to listen to me as well as Pete, then Tough Conversations with David Wood is a new podcast you can subscribe to, again, at PlayForReal.life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Well, David, it’s been a whole lot of fun. I wish you all the best and keep on doing the great work as you’re playing for real.

David Wood
Thanks, Pete. I appreciate you.