Tag

Relationships Archives - Page 30 of 53 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Aug 16
0

478: The Simple Secret To Better Trust and Culture with Randy Grieser

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Randy Grieser says: "Shift judgment to curiosity."

Randy Grieser offers actionable pointers to keep a workplace culture healthy and thriving.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How trust is built in the workplace
  2. The 6 key elements of a healthy workplace culture
  3. Do’s and don’ts for effective conflict management

About Randy:

Randy Grieser is the founder and CEO of ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership & Workplace Performance. He is the author of The Ordinary Leader, and co-author of The Culture Question. Randy is passionate about sharing the importance of creating healthy workplace cultures, and believes leadership requires us to always be intentional about what we do and how we do it.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsor!

Randy Grieser Interview Transcript

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

Randy Grieser
Yeah, thanks for having me on your show.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, could we start by hearing about some of your mountain biking escapades?

Randy Grieser
Yeah. well, it’s all about having fun and being happy. I think all of us need at least one thing that just really gets us going. I was in Canmore, Canada which is just a beautiful mountain biking area, and I hadn’t been on my bike for about a week, and we flew in. My wife and I grabbed our bikes, went to the hills and we were having supper that night, and I said, “Oh, that just made me happy,” right?

So, yeah, I like to get out as much as I can. I’m not like top of the world-class athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a great way to explore the wilderness. We’re also headed into the Isle of Skye in Scotland in September which is going to be super cool.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Well, another thing I find super cool, other than forced segues, is you did a huge study on workplace cultures. Can you tell me what was sort of some of your most striking discoveries there?

Randy Grieser
Yeah, absolutely. When we started to put some work into our book “The Culture Question” we also put together kind of a survey of things we’d like to know about. And the fascinating thing with that, of course, is you don’t know what you’re going to get. So, we had some ideas about what we might find but probably the most exciting thing we found was the secret to having your employees trust you as a leader.

And so, we correlated 20 questions to the question of, “I like where I work.” And for everyone who said, “I like,” where they worked, the two strongest questions that correlated was this, “I trust my direct supervisor.” And for any of you listening who is a manager, is a supervisor, you know how important that is. Trust is the holy grail.

When your employees trust you, they’re going to move mountains with you. You’re not going to have to beat them or to use the saying “the carrot and the stick,” right? You’re not going to have to beat them or give them a reward. They’re going to work towards your mission and vision because they want to and because they’re inspired by you.

And so, the statement that most correlated with “I trust my direct supervisor” was this, “My supervisor cares about me as a person.” Think about that, Pete. To us that was just like, “Wow, we didn’t expect to find that.” But the secret to trust is simply just caring about your staff at a human level.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we’ve heard that theme come up a few times from places like a Navy Seal and more. So, yeah, let’s dig into that. So, caring, what are some ways that supervisors do a great job of caring and some ways that they frequently fall short and maybe just totally overlook it?

Randy Grieser
Absolutely. Well, first of all, I should have full disclosure here because when people attend my presentations or go to my workshops, they see that I’m actually a clinically-trained social worker, and so they roll their eyes, and say, “Well, of course, a clinically-trained social worker would talk about caring leadership.” It’s like the C word is this very scary word for people.

But I always tell people, “I’m a social worker. I don’t do therapy with my employees but I just ask them questions. I just care about them at a human level.” Like, right now, one of our employees, a partner, is in palliative care, and we’ve been really thoughtful about, “How do we support someone who’s going through something like that?” I have another staff member who has a child that has special needs, and, “How do we support an employee who periodically needs to leave the office to go care for the child?”

Probably my favorite story I like to tell though that really gets at the heart of caring leadership is I was giving this presentation and speaking about this, and someone came up to me afterwards and said, “Randy, this is so important to have a caring leadership. I’ve worked in my organization for two years, and my supervisor doesn’t know I have children.” And I said, “Well, you know, you should be asking someone if they have children the first day of the job.”

But, Pete, anybody you know who’s got children between the age of 5 and 15, on a Friday at the end of the day, if you say to them, “Hey, weekend is coming up. What are you doing this weekend?” What do they say, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
It depends with the kids.

Randy Grieser
Yeah, I’m taking my kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, at a fundamental level, caring is not about doing therapy, it’s just like care about your staff, “What did you do this weekend? You’re going away to a vacation. We’re in the midst of the summer. You’re taking a week off. Where are you going?” “Oh, I’m going with my kids,” right? So, it’s really just about caring about people at a human level.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is quite illustrative in terms of maybe a wakeup call, and it’s like, “Oh, I guess I’m not in a habit of asking. If someone says I’m in the habit of asking those questions,” then you may very well find yourself in that boat where you don’t even know about them having kids.

Randy Grieser
Yeah. And even at just a practical level, I mean, you said, “What more can you do?” Like, one of the things that I meet so many managers, is they’re so busy working that they never eat with anybody else, right? And I don’t spend an hour eating with my staff. I don’t even spend half an hour eating with staff, but I’ve consciously chosen for that 10 minutes where I’m going to scarf down food, I mean, you can’t really work on the computer while you’re scarfing down food, right? So, I might as well spend it with people and just chat with them a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, I’d like to hear some more of that. So, asking basic questions, spending some time with food. Other key ways that supervisor show care and fail to show care?

Randy Grieser
Yeah, really, we just need to spend time with people, build relationships. One of the core tenets of a healthy workplace culture that we talk about in the book is building meaningful relationships. And it’s not just with managers and employees, but with everybody. What are we doing as an organization where we are fostering genuine connections?

And one of the things we found in our interviews with people, and we found even just in our work as consultants when we go into organizations, is organizations that are healthy, people like each other and people laugh, people smile, people spend time together. It’s just so clear when you walk into an organization, you feel that, right?

My wife and I, when we were in Canmore this weekend, we went to a couple different restaurants. And there was one restaurant where it was just striking that people hated being there. The service was terrible, people weren’t smiling, people weren’t connecting. And then you go to another restaurant, and it’s like the waiter staff, they’re having fun with each other, right? They’re bumping into each other, they’re chitchatting.

And so, if you think about that, even in just your daily interactions, you go to the coffee shop, you go to the grocery store, you can see a healthy culture at work and people caring about each other. And so, when we build workplaces where people genuinely enjoy each other’s company, we’re knocking one of the things that we need to do out of the park right away. And, again, I’ve yet to come into a healthy organization where people don’t like each other and don’t have a little fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Like each other, having fun, makes total sense. Are there maybe some common workplace, I don’t know, practices or policies that get in the way of that, that maybe should go?

Randy Grieser
Well, yeah, I’ll name a few things here. One is the obvious which is in the spirit of trying to improve workplace culture, people focus on perks, right? And so, nothing drives me up the wall more than when I see some national publication release, “Our best places to work” And, inevitably, we have things like, you know, free beer on Friday nights, “Yay, let’s all go get drunk with our friends.” Really? Like, that’s what makes a great place to work? And the proverbial foosball table, right?

Exactly. Or bring your pet to work day or free yoga. And there’s nothing wrong with those perks but in a lot of time, management will check or tick off the list, and say, “Listen, we’ve done what we needed to do to create a healthy workplace culture.” And many organizations just can’t even afford these things, right, to be frank. We work with a lot of not-for-profit agencies, I’m doing education systems. They can’t afford perks and so you’ve got to do stuff beyond that as well.

Some policies and practice I’ve seen that have gone the wrong way is mentorship programs. I love mentorship programs, mentoring people. My most important task as a leader is to mentor people. And some formalized mentor programs get it wrong because they only mentor some people, “And, Pete, you’re special, you’re one of the few. Aren’t you lucky you get to be mentored by me?” And what does that do to everybody else, is it demotivates them, right?

And so, our approach with mentorship is like everybody should be motivated, everyone should be growing and working towards. And so, we really don’t like those mentorship programs where there’s the kind of like, “You’re special.”

Awards, right? You know, for achievements, for doing things, right? Awards have that kind of counterintuitive effect where for anybody with young children, you’ve always promised that you were never going to say, “I need you to clean your room, and if you clean your room, I’m going to give you something,” right? And the moment you break down and you do that, and you say, “Son or daughter, if you clean your room, I’m going to give you an award.” What happens the next time you need them to clean their room?

Pete Mockaitis
They want the award.

Randy Grieser
They want the award, right? And so, then award becomes kind of this expectation as opposed to a way to actually motivate people. And so, there’s nothing wrong with perks for the sake of perks and within reason, but when we only focus on perks at the expense of those other things that really help us make healthy workplace cultures, we don’t do ourselves well in terms of helping us create that culture.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you laid out six key elements of a healthy workplace culture: communicating purpose and values, providing meaningful work, focusing leadership team on people, building meaningful relationships, creating peak-performing teams, and practicing constructive conflict management. I want to talk about the last one because I think there are many organizations where there’s just a whole lot of fear going on. It’s like, “I can’t really tell you what I’m thinking, so I’m just going to say nothing,” or, “Boy, if we argue, we’re not arguing well. There’s like collateral damage.” So, how do we pull that off?

Randy Grieser
Yeah, absolutely right. I always say you can do a lot of things well but the moment people hate each other, the moment people are living in fear, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be a successful organization and to function effectively, right? And so, when it comes to practicing conflict management, a few things that we really want to focus on is we want to start with leaders.

Interestingly, the second highest correlated statement that we found was that when leaders practice conflict management effectively, employees also do as well. We teach conflict resolution skills in one of the trainings that we offer. And one of the common themes we get from participants is, “I wish my manager would’ve been here,” right?

And managers think they’ve got it all figured out, but there’s a lot of managers that don’t. They tend to avoid and even I sometimes, I’m like, “Are we five years old? You got two kids in a sandbox, like, you’re not five. Learn to figure it out.”

So, one of the most important things is to just be aware of how detrimental on manage conflict. Conflict is inevitable. It’s going to happen, right? It’s natural. We’re human beings. In and of itself it’s not bad. It’s how we manage it. Ironically, one of the ways that we build a culture that manages conflict effectively is we actually have to have some experiences of conflict and some experiences of getting to the other side, and going like, “Oh, you’re not a terrible human being. Like, we had a disagreement, but then we had a natural human conversation and we resolved this issue.”

So, it’s kind of counterintuitive but you do need to experience some level of conflict to actually learn to deal with it effectively. And so, absolutely, I run a training organization so I believe in training. One of the problems we get, Pete, is often we get requests for training like conflict resolution skills or respect for workplace training too late. It’s when we hate each other, you know.

And then it’s like, “Well, the training was actually meant to be before we hate each other so that we can actually work through these things. Now that we hate each other here, you might need to do some things like mediation, or some assessments, and group conflict mediation-type work, but a simple training is a band-aid effect when we’re really not doing well.” So, right away from the get-go we want to be establishing a culture that manages conflict effectively.

For those of you in leadership, that means holding people accountable. It doesn’t mean jumping in and saving the day, right, and being the hero for everybody. Sometimes it means meeting with people and coaching people, “Hey, I noticed that you and Susan aren’t talking anymore. What’s that about?” And holding people accountable and saying, “You need to figure this out because this isn’t going to be healthy in the long run.”

I’ll tell you one of the worst experiences I had with conflict and not being managed effectively, in our own organization, that’s one of the things I want to note, Pete, is a lot of our insights that we talk about in our book and that we teach in our presentations as training has come out of when we weren’t doing well, right? There’s been periods where we’ve learned the hard way.

And one of the worst experiences I had with conflict was with when someone was withholding information because they wanted someone else to look bad. And then when a mistake happened and it made us look bad, he gloated and said, “I knew that was going to happen. I just wanted you to see for yourself.” And I was like, “Oh, my, this conflict has gotten too far.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so, okay, that’s something clearly to not do. Don’t hold information and look to make people embarrass themselves and fail. Check. What are some of the other key do’s and don’ts for effective conflict management?

Randy Grieser
Yeah, you know, really from an employee-to-employee perspective, it’s creating the culture of honest mutual feedback, giving people feedback, being sensitive about it, not being a jerk about it. But when you see something, say something. If something bothers you, don’t wait for it to fester, right?

And so, one of the things that I do, within our organization, is we partner people up. We say, “Listen, if you have to have a difficult conversation with someone, we have a lot of people here who have experienced doing that, get together with someone and roleplay.” Earlier on in my career as a manager, one time I did the classic, you know, the appropriate coaching someone, “Well, instead of me saving the day, why don’t you go have that conversation with that person?” Well, the person went ahead and had a conversation with this person, it was like, “You know, you swear words, swear swords, swear words. “If you ever do this again, I’m going to knock your head off.”

And I went back to the other person and say, “I told you to go talk to him.”

“Well, you told me to go talk to the person and I went and talked to him my way.” And I’m like, “Oh, so when I’m coaching you to actually have the conversation, I had assumed you knew how to have an appropriate conversation but I actually need to walk you through that.”

I’m a big believer in roleplay as a leader. When I used to have difficult conversations, I roleplay with some of my peer leaders to just kind of practice it and get it out there. One of the most important things we encourage our staff is to not to see the other person as a terrible person. Most people genuinely are reasonable people. 95% of us are pretty good human beings, we don’t really actually want to hurt people’s feelings, but we do stupid stuff sometimes, right?

And so, the first thing is just to shift. You know, we have a T-shirt actually, Pete, and I should send it to you actually. And it’s a great T-shirt that says, “Shift judgment to curiosity.” And, really, what that’s about is, like, when you think that someone is being a jerk, actually just be thoughtful for a second, and go, “Well, maybe they don’t mean that.” So, instead of judging them, be curious, “Why are they acting in this way?” It doesn’t mean how they were acting is right but it kind of humanizes our relationship a little bit more. So, it’s one of our favorite sayings, “Shift judgment to curiosity.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And so, I’m curious, so screening the swear words is not the way to go, and doing some roleplay in advance can be super valuable. Any other pro tips for the actual conversation?

Randy Grieser
Yeah, really, one of the things that we try to stay away from is the emotion when we have a difficult conversation and focus on the problem and the task at hand, right? So, don’t make it about what your intent was but actually just focus on, “This is how it made me feel.” And so, we go back to the classic communication 101 I-statements, right? “When you do this, this is how it makes me feel.”

Most of the time that person didn’t know that. Most of the time that person wasn’t aware that your intent, right? We have a little diagram we have, it’s called Action, Intent, and Effect, right? And the action is what’s out in the public for people to see, but the intent is hidden, and the effect is hidden. So, sometimes even I will do something I have no clue how it would’ve landed on you. And so, we really encourage our staff to focus on the intent and the effect of people.

First of all, we just want to build a culture that has low levels of conflict to begin with, right? And, again, that’s where we start to get into some of our other areas. When we hire people, that’s one of the things we focus on. Like, one of our core values is that we want people to embody what we teach. We teach people to be respectful in the workplace. We teach people to manage conflict effectively so we expect people to do that.

And so, we’ve crafted our interviewing questions to hire for people who fit our culture. And so right away, when we have new people come in into the organization, if we sense that they’re fit in our culture, we nip things in the bud right away. So, in general, when it comes to implementing some of these six principles and elements of healthy workplace cultures, when it comes to the people effect, we need to start right from when we hire people.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so, if you’re talking to a professional who is not in control, they’re not sort of leading the organization, shaping the culture from the top, are there some basic things you recommend that all people can do to contribute to oozing the culture and fun and liking each other vibes?

Randy Grieser
You know, absolutely. I mean, first of all, I’ll say that clearly leadership sets the tone of healthy workplace cultures, right? And time and time again I run into employees who really want to improve that healthy culture but leadership is not on board. And so, one of the first tasks that you have to do as an employee is try to influence leadership.

And I use the experience, when we go back to the point about negative conflict, because I say, “This is not just about the wellbeing of employees in the workplace. This is about your financial wellbeing as well.” And so, sometimes I use that approach to senior leaders, right? By the fact that we don’t have a healthy workplace culture, people aren’t sharing information, we’re not communicating well, people are not engaged because they’re just putting in their time for a paycheck, and so they’re not being as innovative. Like, this is affecting our ability to be successful as an organization.

So, one of the reasons that we need to care about this as leaders is because it’s actually going to help us, if you’re a business, it’s going to help you financially. If you’re a social service agency or not-for-profit, it’s just about being an effective contributor to whatever role you’re doing. And so, when I’m giving this talk to C-suite professionals who sometimes need a little bit more grease to get them to think and care about the wellness of their employees, I really hammer home this point about, “When you have a healthy workplace culture, this is your competitive advantage.”

And one of the persons interviewed, he clearly said to me, “Randy, I could’ve jumped ship to a competitor, it would’ve increased my salary.” He was already making a six-figure salary, and he said, “I could’ve made 50% more, but I didn’t go because I love the place I work. And a couple of years ago I went to this Angelina and Brad Pitt divorce scenario where it was just like all over. It was terrible. Like, I was in the courts all the time. And my senior staff, they had my back. They knew that this was important to me, they didn’t make me feel bad. So, why would I leave this place? They’ve been great to me. Why would I?”

And so, one of the things we talk about is money matters at the lowest end of the level, but for many people, I mean, there are some professions, I think of the sales profession as an exception there, but for many people, man, when they have a great place to work, they don’t want to leave that environment, right, because they worked in places that aren’t a great place to work.

And so, when you get senior leadership, as an employee if you kind of get senior leadership to talk and do that, I’ve had frontline employees grab this book and just show it to their leader, and say, “You know, it would really be great if you could read this and we can talk about this,” right? And there’s been slowly, you know, people begin to change.

One of the most exciting things that I’ve seen within healthy organizations is, time and time again, when I talk to leaders and managers, they say one of their biggest issues is access and retention to key talent, right? Well, the secret to access and retention of key talent is be a great place to work and your employees will bring in people for you. When there’s job openings, they’ll say, “Hey, you should come work here because we’re a great place to work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, Randy, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear a couple of your favorite things?

Randy Grieser
Well, it depends on what else you’re going to ask me. You know, absolutely. I like to just kind of review the six key elements, if I may. I’ll do kind of a quick summary. We’ve talked about the importance of conflict management. Communicating your purpose and values, like most employees want to work in an organization that matters, that makes a difference. Most in organizations want to be guided and connected to that purpose.

Meaningful work. Most people don’t want to do work that is just boring and irrelevant. And so, making sure that people’s interest and ability and purpose all align together. There’s things that you could do there. Focusing your leadership team on people. Really, that caring about people we’ve talked about. Building meaningful relationships, people want to like who they work with. We’ve spent the vast majority of our waking hours at work. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually liked each other?

And one of the kind of unique things that we’ve focused on in our book was the importance of creating peak performance teams. It’s really hard to know that we have a culture if we literally don’t work together. And I’ve walked into organizations that’s, true, they don’t work together. We have a bunch of individuals who show up, they don’t even say hi to each other, they go to their little cubicle, they do whatever they do all day, and they leave. So, it’s really difficult to establish a culture when we’re not working together in teams.

So, those were kind of the six key things that, really, we want to focus on. And, again, instead of perks, focus on these six things then you’re going to have your healthy culture.

Pete Mockaitis
And now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Randy Grieser
You know, I don’t memorize things well, but I’ll be honest, my daughter inspires me. She’s 16 years old. She’s super ambitious. Last weekend, we climbed a mountain together and we spent seven hours. It was seven hours and it was quite the slug. And there were several things that she said on the trip that I thought, “This is so cool that my 16-year old daughter can think this way.”

And one of the things that we talked about was sustained effort. We’ve been hiking up this mountain for four hours and it got really steep, and it was she said it’s like two steps forward, one step back. And we had a conversation about sustained effort. What was kind of funny is we lost my partner and her mom, right, along the way. When I say we lost, she just stopped climbing because she got scared. And my daughter had said to her, my daughter was trying to be encouraging her, and this is a great quote from a 16-year old, right, “Don’t let fear stop you from living life.”

And I thought, “How brilliant is that?” I’m super inspired by my daughter for thinking that way and for persevering and continuing on.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Randy Grieser
You know, I pick this book up probably six, seven years ago, and I just can’t help but always going back to it. Can I give you two books, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Randy Grieser
You know, one, I love stories of other people. I love stories of people building things unique. And one of my favorite books, it seems a bit odd, but it’s the biography of Warren Buffett “Tap Dancing to Work.” I believe passion is so important in how we work and if we want to inspire other people to be excited about their job. I love the fact that Warren Buffett is, what, 87, 88 years old now, literally still runs the business, not like a fake corner office but actually is doing real work. And, yet, he’s given away everything.

And even the title of the book “Tap Dancing to Work” so, he really taps into, man, we got to like what we do, right? I mean, my son has graduated from high school, and he’s torn about what he does, and I’m like, “I don’t care what you do, but you better like it. Be excited about it. Be passionate about it because it’s a long 40 years if you’re not passionate about work.” So, I just love some of Warren’s thoughts and quotes. And everyone thinks of him as a finance person, but he’s a great manager and a great leader as well.

Another shout-out is to who we really resonate when it comes to how to motivate people is Daniel Pink and his book “Drive.” I really, really kind of pinpointed in the three core areas of autonomy, mastery, purpose. We touched on even some of those in our six areas, right? So, really, he was a pioneer in kind of shifting the way we think about motivation and employee engagement.

So, those are my two big books.

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

Randy Grieser
Well, come to our website Achieve Centre. We are based in Canada. We do work in the US as well. So, Centre is spelled with an R-E. It makes it unique. So, AchieveCentre.com.

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

Randy Grieser
Yeah. You know, you want to be awesome at your job, just be nice, be a nice person, be kind, right? Somebody the other day asked me, “What do you look for when you’re hiring people?” I’m like, “We want to work with nice people. Like, at the end of the day, I want to like you as a human being.” So, you know what, if we’re all a little bit nice to each other, we’re going to be awesome at our job, and we’re going to make awesome workplaces.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Randy, thanks for this, and keep on caring.

Randy Grieser
Yeah, thanks for having me on your show, Pete.

Aug 07
0

474: How to Turn Your Boss, Colleagues, and Customers into Superfans with Pat Flynn

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Pat Flynn says: "It's those random little tiny surprises that... make the relationship flourish."

Pat Flynn discusses how to turn anyone into your superfan.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How superfans transform your career
  2. How to create the moments that win superfans
  3. How your ego can kill your blossoming superfandom

About Pat:

Pat Flynn is a father, husband, and entrepreneur who lives and works in San Diego, CA. He owns several successful online businesses and is a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and host of the Smart Passive Income and AskPat podcasts, which have earned a combined total of over 55 million downloads, multiple awards, and features in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes. He is also an advisor to ConvertKit, LeadPages, Teachable, and other companies in the digital marketing arena.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, Sponsor!

The Simple Habit meditation app can help you pay better attention to your emerging superfans. The first 50 listeners to sign up at SimpleHabit.com/Awesome get 30% off premium subscriptions.

Pat Flynn Interview Transcript

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

Pat Flynn
It’s awesome to be here. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Pat, this is just so fun for me. In a way, you’re sort of like the godfather of this podcast because I learned how to podcast from watching your YouTube videos.

Pat Flynn
Hey, thank you for that. That’s cool. I love hearing that. It’s just those videos were created a while back, and to know that people are still getting value from those, and are still taking action, that’s so cool. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. And I pointed many a person to them, like, “Okay, so how do I get started?” I was like, “Go watch these. That’s how you get started.”

Pat Flynn
Perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, I want to chat with you about how professionals can make, say, their boss, their colleagues, their clients, their direct reports turn into superfans of them at work? And you just wrote the book on Superfans. So, could you orient us to the big idea here?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, so I come from the entrepreneurial space where people are building their own businesses, building their own followings. And as you build a following, you want to have and realize that you understand there’s different kinds of people who are following you. There’s people who have just found you who don’t really know who you are or they’ve just met you, and there are people who are superfans, who will, if you have a business, they will share your business with other people. They’ll become repeat customers. They will defend you from all the trolls and the haters out there without you even knowing these things exist.

Pete Mockaitis
“Back off.”

Pat Flynn
Exactly. And in the workspace, a lot of these tactics very much apply. It’s the same thing whether it’s your employees or your coworkers or your boss, you can become somebody’s favorite. And in the workspace, when that happens, some really cool things happen, you have people that you could rely on, you have people who will come to bat for you, people who will, in the same, defend you if anybody says anything, and you’re going to have a lot more fun too doing that.

It’s all about those experiences that you offer for people. I think we meet so many people in this world, online and offline, it can be hard to realize just the importance of, “Okay, well, how are we keeping up-to-date with this relationship? How are we offering more value over time? How are we making them feel like they’re special and they belong such that, in return, even without asking for it, you will be elevated?” If you’re a business, your brand will be shouted. If you are an employee or work in the workspace, you might have opportunities come your way that wouldn’t have normally come your way.

And so, I think building superfans is really key. And, really, what it means is just, “How can we provide amazing experiences for others so that, in return, we’ll have more opportunities than we even know?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that. You’ve got that down. And I totally resonate and agree with what you’re saying there. And I want to dig into a bit of the how in terms of creating those experiences and the best practices for doing so. But, first, I imagine you’ve got some pretty awesome stories I want to touch upon. Can you give us some examples of just how super some superfans have gotten with regard to their superfandom?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, with me and my brands, Smart Passive Income, I’m pretty well-known in the entrepreneurial space, and I’ve generated a lot of superfans which is really amazing through a long period of time of helping serve these people. A fan is not created the moment a person finds you, right? It’s from the moments you create for them over time.

So, I’ve had people following me for over a decade, and they not only are there to purchase product when I come out with new products, or retweet my tweets when I tweet. But they send me gifts and they, like, I’m staring right here in my office. Somebody hand-painted a Bobblehead of me. It’s really strange. My wife does not like to see it because it’s really weird, and I have like a bigger head than it is my body because it’s a Bobblehead. But somebody took the time to do that.

Another person sent me, they’re from Mexico, and they have gotten a lot of value from my podcasts, they had spent two weeks creating an art piece. And what this art piece was, if you look at it, it looks like a DeLorean from Back to the Future because a lot of people know that I’m a huge fan of Back to the Future but it said, “Pat to the Future.” And when you look up close this thing that’s about two feet wide and one foot tall is made of string on beeswax. It’s like some ancient form of Mexican art that just this person wanted to give back. And it’s just like, “What? This is insane.” And then, of course, for business…isn’t that crazy? Like, I didn’t even know that was a thing.

Pete Mockaitis
It sounds like it took a long, long time.

Pat Flynn
Yeah. And I’m like, “’Why would you ever…?” And it’s, “Well, because you’ve given so much to me and I value what you have to offer.”

Pete Mockaitis
I just want a coffee in Chicago, that’s all I want.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, exactly. And then there’s other people who, like, I have this book coming out. I’ve had people email me, the moment they heard of this book was coming out, and they’re like, “Pat, I want to buy a hundred copies for me. I don’t even know what it’s about. I just want to help you out.” And I’m like, “This is amazing. This is incredible.”

And then you have the fans who, I come out with my podcast on Wednesdays, and if I’m late, your fans will also be upset if you’re late. Like, “Hey, where is my episode. I need it in my life. This is a part of my routine. Are you okay? Did you die? Like, you’re late with your episode. Are you okay?” It’s just really crazy.

And when we think of fans, we think of usually things like we’re a fan of musicians, we’re a fan of baseball teams, football teams, athletes, actors, actresses, but not for things like business and whatever. My first fan actually was, I remember, her name was Jackie, and this was actually before I started Smart Passive Income, which is where most people know me from now.

This relates to my first online business which was about helping people pass an architectural exam because, my quick story, I got laid off in 2008 from the architectural world. I had my dream job, I lost it, and I ended up surviving by helping people pass a particular exam in the architecture space, and it did really well. And that’s when I created Smart Passive Income to share how all that happened and all the new businesses that I’ve been creating since then.

But I got an email from a woman who had purchased my study guide for this exam, and it was like, I don’t know, four pages long of just how much her life has changed since passing this exam she was thanking me for. And at the end of this email, she’s like, “Pat, I’m a huge fan.” And I was like, “I don’t understand. I just helped you pass an exam.” Like, “Okay, I’ll just waive this off because that’s a weird thing to say.”

But then I noticed that over the next couple of months there were like 25 other customers who came in from the exact same company she was in. I could tell because the end of the email address was the same firm. And what I ended up finding out was that Jackie had gone around and convinced every single person in her firm, her boss included, to make sure to purchase my guide because they were all going to pass that test.

And she could’ve just simply given that guide to everybody individually. It was just an electronic guide, it was an e-book, but she went out of her way to make sure that I got paid back in return. And that’s the cool thing that happens when you build fans in the business. And I can imagine in the workspace something happening that’s very similar.

Let’s say you’re a manager, you can obviously be a manager who’s all in with your work, but maybe you don’t treat your employees in the best light and you’re not going to have employees that are going to bat for you when you really need it, versus if you have fans of yours, in a sense, who are there working for you, I mean, they might come to you on Monday and go, “You know, hey, Pete, I was thinking about this through the weekend. I just spent a little extra time working on this project for you because I thought it’d be helpful for the team.” Like, “Wow, you just stepped out to do something that I didn’t even ask you to do. How amazing is that.”

And this, obviously, applies in relationships too. There’s a section of the book that talks about small little surprises and how important those things are. These things to create superfans, they don’t require a lot of money. It just requires a little bit of time and intention. And if you’re building any kind of relationship, especially with somebody you’re married to, for example, oftentimes it’s those random little tiny surprises that get remembered, and that gets shared, that make the relationship flourish, versus, if you say “I love you” every night before you go to bed, it just becomes routine, it becomes usual, it becomes expected.

It’s the “I love you” at 3:48 p.m. on Tuesday. For no reason, you go into her office, you give her some chocolates, and you just say, “Hey, honey, this is for you because you’re amazing.” And then everybody else in the office goes, “Oh, my gosh, your husband is incredible. I wish my husband was like that.” Like, you’ve just created fans not just with your wife but everybody else in the office too who wishes they had a husband just like you.

Those little tiny moments go a long way. And this is the kind of stuff I talk about in this book. A lot of different strategies that you can pick and choose from, sort of like a recipe book, to allow people to feel like they’ve got an amazing person in you who is going to be there for them and something they can gravitate toward.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, let’s talk about some strategies here. You mentioned experiences and surprises. What are some of the top strategies in terms of, let’s say, my criteria or applicability for professionals, and potency of creating superfans, which really just packs a wallop of an impact, and it’s just very doable? Like, “Hey, anybody can do this, and there’s a good bang for the buck if you do. So, go ahead and make some great experiences like these.”

Pat Flynn
Yeah. So, imagine you’ve just had somebody new come into your life and you don’t really know them, they don’t really know you. This is a good opportunity for you to offer some stuff that would allow them to go, “Whoa, I like you. I’m going to follow what you’re up to. I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to go to bat for you.” And that’s kind of what we want. We don’t want it to be the opposite.

And there’s some amazing strategies that work really, really well. Number one, I love to make sure that I’m speaking the same language of the person that I’m speaking to. Now, yes, most of us are speaking English to each other in the United States, but I’m not talking about that kind of language. I’m talking about language as in, “What are the lyrics that that person is going to respond to?”

This takes me back to a story where I did a lot of research on superfans, by the way, mostly with my wife because my wife is a superfan of the Backstreet Boys.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. I followed you for a while. I knew you’d say that.

Pat Flynn
So, you knew this already. And I dug into her story because I knew she was a superfan because she literally has this box of like stuff, like action figures, framed pictures, event concert brochures, and all this stuff. Like, she is a true superfan of the Backstreet Boys. She’s even recently gone to see them now even 30 years later-ish, which is crazy.

But I dug into her story, and I found out that the first time she was really triggered by this band related to something that was happening to her life. She was 15, she had just broken off with her boyfriend, and she was listening to the radio. There was no Spotify or Apple Music or anything like that back then, it was just radio. And she had heard a song that she had heard many times before, but it was this time that when she heard the song, it really made an impact on her. And the reason was because every lyric that they were singing, every word in the song, was speaking to everything that she was literally going through in that moment. It was just like they took the words right out of her head and put it in a song.

And that song was called “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” by the Backstreet Boys. And that was the activation trigger. And in business, it’s a very same thing. Even if you have the best solution in the world, you need to present it in a way that a person who would need that solution would understand. And so, if you’re a manager, for example, and you’re trying to train somebody, if you train them as if they already have that knowledge that you have, it’s called the curse of knowledge, sometimes it can be either demeaning the way you might speak to them, sometimes it might seem like they are falling behind, and they’d start to kind of close up in a shell in a little bit.

But if you speak at their level and understand the language they would respond to, and, yes, every person is different, you’re going to have a better chance of moving them and having them sort of pay attention to you, and perhaps even go to you before others because they can go, “Oh, well, Pete understands me because Pete gets me.” And that’s the kind of best kind of feedback you can get. It’s when a person is, you’re speaking to them, they go, “Yeah. Oh, my gosh, yes, you’re absolutely right.” That’s the kind of reaction you want to get when you speak to people. So, using the right lyrics is really important.

And then my other favorite way to sort of activate a person who you have just met is to give them a small quick win. A small quick win. And I’ll tell you a quick story. I don’t know about you, Pete, but I followed a lot of personal finance blogs back in the day. I was subscribed to probably about 40 of them. I was just kind of a personal finance nerd. I wanted to know everything about my 401(k) and 529s and all that stuff, and I followed them all in my RSS Feeds back when RSS Feeds were how we got content in our inboxes.

And there was one particular person, a finance blogger, who I was a little put off by. And I was put off a little bit because of the name of this blog. The name of this blog was called I Will Teach You to be Rich.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Ramit wasn’t doing it well.

Pat Flynn
Ramit, yeah. I was just, “Hmm, this guy is a little, I don’t know, pretentious or whatever.” But he had an article posted that I got really interested because the title was “Save 25% on your Cable bill in 15 minutes reading this script.” And I was at lunch at architecture, and I was like, “Okay, I have 15 minutes. What’s the worst that can happen?”

So, I called my cable company, I read the script that Ramit laid out for me, and I was able to save 20% of my cable bill in just about 10 minutes. And it blew me away. I immediately went right into the rest of his content. That was the activation/trigger point for me.

Now, consider that quick win versus what all these other personal finance bloggers were saying. They were saying things like…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “Don’t drink lattes for a lot of time.”

Pat Flynn
“Don’t drink latte. Put that $30 into your savings account until you’re 65, and then you can win.” So, “Hmm, who am I going to be more interested in right now? This person who gave me the small quick win.” And if you’re working with others, number one, find out what they need help with. And, number two, surprise them by actually helping them with that even without them asking for it. That’s going to be a small quick win that’s going to get them to trigger and make that sort of connection with you in their life.

And when you need a favor, you’ve already sort of earned the right to ask for that favor when you do that kind of stuff. You’re almost kind of, as my good friend Jordan Harbinger says, “You’re kind of digging the well before you need it. If you need to dig the well when you’re thirsty, it’s already too late.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you will be dehydrated well before you get to the bottom of that well.

Pat Flynn
Especially when you just have a little pickaxe that you work with, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, no power tools. Well, boy, there’s so much of that that’s resonating in terms of the lyrics. It’s true. I have some odd word choices I’ve been told, and yet when people are using them, I feel connected to them, like, “This guy is cool.” And that also harkens to kind of… we’ve had a couple sort of great copywriters on the program, and that’s sort of the message that they reinforce in terms of, “Join the conversation,” in the person’s head already, and use the words they use.

And if someone refers to their child as an infant, or a baby, or a toddler, or a little one, matching that has resonance especially if it’s more, I think, unique and out there. It’s like, “Oh, yes, you called them little one and, consciously or subconsciously, it’s like we are similar to each other and I like you.”

Pat Flynn
I like that, yes. Somebody once called my kid a little human, and I sort of repeated that back about his baby, I was like, “Oh, okay. So, tell me about your little human.” And then, of course, they smiled and laughed and you get into this conversation, and just like really quickly you’re on the same level, and I love that.

And speaking of kids and little things like that, that’s another strategy for triggering people. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an event before where you’re meeting new people for the first time, and it’s just you always get that surface level sort of conversations, “Hey, what’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do?” those kinds of things.

But the moment you find somebody who has had a shared experience that you’ve had, like maybe you’re both parents, or maybe you both went to the same college, or you both recently went on a vacation to Hawaii, or something, you just found that out, like you’re immediately best friends, right? You hang onto that person, you found somebody who’s like you, and you can just already have conversations that you wouldn’t be able to have with others.

And this is why on my podcast, for example, and you know this, at the beginning of every episode that I have, you hear the voice of a guy, his name is John Mele, he reads a little fun fact about me, right? Like, “I was in the marching band, or I’m Sagittarius, or I was born 11 pounds 12 ounces, or whatever.”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s amazing how many it’s been.

Pat Flynn
It’s kind of hard now to find them because I didn’t think I’d get this far in my podcast but we’re almost 400 episodes in, so, yeah. But going back to what I was saying, like I’ll go to a conference, I’ll meet somebody who I’ve never met before, and they immediately go, like, “Tell me about marching band because it was one of the funnest times in my life. Did you have fun with it, too?” Or, somebody is half-Filipino, they’d go, “Pat, dude, tell me about your parents. Like, did you grow up with this? Did you grow up with that? Did you eat a lot of lumpia or pancit?” And it’s just like we’re talking like we’re friends and we just met. And it’s the coolest thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Can you tell me, maybe on the flipside, what are some key things that just kill the vibe, the experience, the superfandom that’s blossoming in a hurry, like, some simple mistakes that too many people make that we should stop making right away?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, if you’re in a conversation, and the spotlight, you’re putting the spotlight on you before you put it on the other person, that’s going to kill any sort of chance you have to have that person begin to start to have interest in you. The trick is, really, and I think I once heard this from a guy named James Schramko, credit to him for this. I don’t know if he came up with this phrase. But it was, “We need to stop trying to be so interesting and start being interested,” right?

So, we always try to go, “Oh, like, look at me, how great I am. Look at all my credentials. This is why we should hang out because, look at me.” No, it should be the other way around. You can get interested in somebody else and, in turn, they will be interested in you. And this is actually how somebody that you may have heard of before, his name is Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, it was really interesting how quickly he came to be when his book came out in 2007. It just became a number one bestseller and everybody was kind of wondering why.

So, I invited him on my podcast, and I found out that he was able to have all these people talk about his book on their blog by going to conferences, so number one, meeting in person. If you just stay online to try and build relationships, it’s going to be a lot harder. So, number one, he went offline, shook hands with people, met people, and was so interested in what they were doing first, that they couldn’t help but ask, “Oh, so, Tim, tell me about what you got going on.” “Oh, I have this book called The 4-Hour Workweek coming out, and it’s coming out here. I’m just trying to get people to find interest in it. I think it’s the new way of doing business moving forward.” “Oh, my gosh, it sounds interesting. Tell me more. Tell me more. Come on my show. Come on my podcast. Come on my blog.”

And that’s how he was able to break through. And I think that’s a good lesson for all of us because when we center that focus on the person who we’re speaking to, the person who we have a relationship with, then it actually comes back to us in a very authentic and organic way.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. Well, Pat, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention about superfandom before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Pat Flynn
Yeah. So, let’s talk about superfandom by being superfan smart. That was dumb, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m okay.

Pat Flynn
The dad jokes sometimes work and they sometimes don’t. But I think another thing that relates to kind of what just happened here, you kind of got to be yourself. If you try to pretend to be like somebody else, then people, yes, maybe they’ll follow you or be interested, but they’re not going to be interested in you. They’re going to be interested in the thing that you portray.

In the online business space, you may have seen these people tout these mansions and these Lamborghinis or Ferraris and they get a big following. But why? Because people are interested in the cars and the money and the mansions but not them. The more you can be yourself the more likely it is you’re going to attract the right kinds of people, and the more likely a person is going to understand you.

And my good friend, Chris Tucker, says, “Your vibe attracts your tribe.” And there’s no shame in who you are. Like, I know I’m weird, and that’s okay. My son came home one day from school, and he was crying a little bit because his friend called him weird. And I was like, “Dude, you are weird.” And he was like, “What are you talking about, dad? I don’t want to be weird.” I’m like, “Yes, you do, because that’s what makes you unique and different. If you aren’t weird, you’ll just be average and you’d be lost in the crowd. You’d be just like everybody else. Do you want to be just like everybody else?” And then I was like, “Your sister is weird. Your mom is weird, don’t tell her I said that. But we’re all weird, and that’s what makes us cool.”

Another thing, and I take a lot of inspiration from LEGO. LEGO does an amazing job of mobilizing their fans. They actually were $150 million in debt. No, actually, it was $800 million in debt in 2013. They were just building too many products, they weren’t really paying attention to who’s buying what, they were just creating and creating, and they were losing money, $800 million in debt. And then the CEO came on board who said, “No, we’ve got to shift our focus to fans and give them what they want, get them involved.”

And now they’re worth $150 billion worth more than Mattel and Hasbro alone. And they do a lot of amazing intentional things to mobilize their fans, and these are things that we could do on our lives too. One thing they do is they encourage LEGO fans to meet with each other. So, Pete, do you know what an AFOL is?

Pete Mockaitis
Adult Fan of LEGOs. I learned this once, yes.

Pat Flynn
You’re absolutely right. And what LEGO does is they encourage Adult Fans of LEGOs, who’s a very specific niche group of LEGO fans, to meet with each other, and they do. If you go to Google and you type AFOL meetup, you’re going to see hundreds, if not thousands, of different locations around the world where now Adult Fans of LEGO can come and meet together. And they do tournaments, they build contests, they just get together and talk about the history of LEGO, and they just kind of geek out about it, and it’s amazing. These little meetups, even for little groups, little niche groups in your community, in your workspace, can work really, really well.

I know back in the architecture days that I was in, there were a number of us who really bonded together very well because we love being on the softball team together, right? And it’s just kind of a cliché thing to have like a softball team for your business, but it worked so well to bring those people together and high-fiving each other and rallying and being a part of the team that only enhances the business. And if the business owner, the founder, were to encourage that and even get some really nice jerseys and congratulate the team every once in a while, I mean, what does that do for morale in the space, and to get people excited about not just the softball game but coming back to work to see their teammates, which I can imagine being really cool?

Another thing LEGO does very well is they allow their fans to actually help make decisions. And so, this means giving a little bit of room for involvement in around the people who are in the workspace with you. Well, LEGO does that. I don’t know if you knew this, but there’s a website called LEGO Ideas where any of us, you or me, could build a LEGO creation, we could submit it to LEGO on LEGO IDEAS. And if the community, not LEGO, and if the community of LEGO builders votes it up, then LEGO will actually manufacture that product and you’ll get a royalty and they’ll put your name on it. And how amazing is that to have like other LEGO creators actually help influence the business and where it’s going.

And even a little bit of involvement goes a long way. As I like to say, when people are involved, now they’re invested. And when you can get people involved, they’re going to be invested in you. We’re just scratching the surface here with superfans, but I hope this is encouraging all of you to maybe, even the next time you go to work, to see what little extra you can do to make a person feel like they belong to something, make them feel like they’re involved in something, make them feel like they’re part of something. Give them something to root for and they’ll go to bat for you, like I keep saying.

Pete Mockaitis
That was awesome. Thank you, Pat. And now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, absolutely. “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” This is Henry Ford. And it basically comes down to what you believe in, and what you believe in turning into your reality. If you are trying to attempt to do something and you really don’t believe you can do it, well, you’ll probably not going to be able to do it. it’s only when you believe you can that you’ll actually muster up the courage to get it done. And it’s all about mindset. So, whatever goals you might have in your life, inside of work, outside of work, if you don’t believe it’s possible, then you’ve already lost. You got to believe it.

And sometimes it’s hard to ask every individual to believe these things, which is why it’s so important to connect with others who are going to support you, connect with other people who are going to root for you, which is why building superfans is a great thing too.

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

Pat Flynn
Yeah, I’d point them to my main website at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m also pretty active on Instagram and also on YouTube. You can find me at @PatFlynn. And I don’t know if you’ll have like an affiliate link or something for Superfans, but I’d recommend people go to that to get Superfans if that’s something you’re interested in.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Jul 29
0

470: How to Give and Receive Useful Feedback Every Month: Insider Tips on Making Performance Reviews Not Suck with Dr. Craig Dowden

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Craig Dowden says: "If we want to give appreciation, give only appreciation. The most common blunder is that we combine coaching and evaluation."

Craig Dowden exposes gaps in common performance review practices and presents an empowering alternative approach everybody can use–no matter where you work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why the current performance review practice is broken
  2. The key thing NOT to do when giving feedback
  3. A different and better strategy for regular reviews

About Craig:

Craig Dowden (Ph.D.) is an inspiring and thought-provoking executive coach, Forbes author and keynote speaker who partners with leaders and executives to tackle their most important personal and organizational challenges. Craig holds a Doctorate in psychology, with a concentration in business and is a Certified Positive Psychology Coach. In his role as a trusted advisor, he integrates the latest findings in the science of leadership, team, and organizational excellence into his coaching and consulting work. In 2009, Craig was recognized as one of Ottawa’s 40 under 40 business leaders by the Ottawa Business Journal.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, Sponsors!

Craig Dowden Interview Transcript

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

Craig Dowden
Thanks so much for the invitation, Pete. Looking forward to chatting with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m looking forward to it as well. But, first, I want to hear a quick tale about your nickname Egg in high school and how you used that to your advantage.

Craig Dowden
Nice. Well, good background searching and sleuthing there. When I was growing up, I was kind of an awkward gangly tall kid, and so we would have races around the neighborhood. And so, of course, the classic last one to Craig’s house is the rotten egg. And then, I was routinely last, so you can see how they quickly made the link between, “Craig’s the rotten egg, Craig’s the rotten egg, Craig is the egg.” And, thus, the legend of Egg was born.

And so, not to be thwarted by the nickname, I ran for Student Council President, and we actually had a very boisterous group of supporters, and we had a lot of different campaign slogans attached to them, like, “Vote for Egg. He won’t crack under pressure.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, zing.

Craig Dowden
Or, “Vote for Egg, or the yolk is on you.” So, we got a little playful. And, apparently, that worked, branding, won by a landslide, so it was quite the campaign. Very enjoyable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well-done. Well, I’m going to go for an awkward for a segue, and I want to hear about how often people feel like there may be egg on their face on the giving and receiving of performance reviews out there.

Craig Dowden
Exactly, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I was inspired. I enjoyed your incoming pitch and we’re getting more and more selective these days as we’re getting clearer and clearer on what listeners want. But you nailed it, you and your publicist got it going on. Performance reviews, that is a pain point for a lot of people. Can you orient us maybe what’s current practice in most organizations with performance reviews and how well is that working for us?

Craig Dowden
Well, thank you for the feedback. I’m glad the pitch was received well. And, yes, it’s one of those internal pain points. What’s really interesting is if you look at organizational research, in very few circumstances does management and employees agree on certain things. You talk about engagement levels, transparency, you name it, there often tends to be a disconnect between leadership and employees. And, yet, for performance reviews, this is one of those areas that are universally loathed.

Pete Mockaitis
Loathed with a T-H, not a V as in Valentine’s. T-H as in Thermopylae.

Craig Dowden
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
The first T-H word I thought. How about thumb?

Craig Dowden
Exactly. So, yes, they just absolutely, people just dislike them. So, managers really dislike giving the feedback, and employees really hate receiving the feedback. Oftentimes they’ll use a lot of ineffective strategies like the compliment sandwich, which, you know, say something nice and then you follow it up with something really critical, and then, of course, just to make sure they leave on a positive note, you end it with a positive.

And so, all of these tips and tricks just lead to a lot of disappointed participants in this process. There was a study done a couple of years ago where 55% of people said they didn’t feel that their annual performance review was fair or accurate representation of their performance. Two-thirds said there was surprising feedback in the review, which you would think that shouldn’t happen. And then three quarters of employees said there were no specific behavioral examples given to support the feedback.

So, this is a really broken process which many leading organizations are starting to realize and make changes as a result of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I’ll tell you, this just fires me up. I just think feedback is so important.

Craig Dowden
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve heard it said that it’s the breakfast of champions.

Craig Dowden
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s so powerful and useful as a tool for learning, growth, and development which I am big in, big on, and to hear that in some organizations this may be the only or the majority of the feedback they get, which is sad as well, and then to hear that it’s not working for people, and isn’t accurate, doesn’t have specific examples, it makes me sad because it could be a cause for celebration.

I actually enjoyed getting reviews because I viewed them, well, one at Bain, they gave very detailed and thorough reviews and lots of examples, and I like that. But, two, I thought I’m in this job largely for the learning, and a lot of the learning is happening during my performance review, for me. And, thusly, I was like excited to go into them because I thought, “This is part of my compensation. It’s like I’m getting a bonus.”

And I was a little bit odd in most of my college life, like, “Okay, Pete, I kind of liked it a little but you’re weird.” But organizations that are not advanced or in that domain, of which it sounds like they are a majority, leave a pretty crappy experience all the way around.

Craig Dowden
Well, for sure, and I think and I love your personal experience and being a bit of an outlier to say in terms of just loving the process. And when you look at the evidence, people are open to receiving feedback, and I think there’s just a lot of challenges. I think that if it’s constructed well, the conversation can go fantastic because it provides an opportunity for leaders to give some feedback to people in terms of where they are and where they need to be.

It also provides people in the organization an opportunity to learn and grow, which this is one of the keys when you look at the research around engagement, that’s one of the key indicators, “Do people, feel like they’re learning new skills, having an opportunity to challenge themselves and grow?” So, fundamentally, the process is a wonderful one to really drive and facilitate peak performance and learning, yet, unfortunately, the way in which we handle it just ends up leaving invariably to some really challenging circumstances because people either don’t deliver the feedback particularly well.

Doug Stone, out of Harvard, did some fabulous work around the different types of feedback so this is one huge challenge in terms of how some missteps that we make. So, he identified three primary forms of feedback. So, there’s appreciation, which is, “Hey, Pete, great job. Really love what you’re doing. Couldn’t achieve what we’re doing without you.”

Then there’s coaching, which is essentially bidirectional conversation where you’re exploring with someone different ways of approaching a particular challenge or opportunity. And then the last one is evaluation, which is essentially saying, “Hey, Pete, this is where you are based on what we initially projected, or what our end goals were, and so let’s discuss that.”

And so, based on Doug’s research, and I’ve spoken to him extensively around this, the difficulty is it’s almost like the movie “Ghostbusters,” right? Don’t cross the streams. And, unfortunately, we have this terrible habit of crossing the stream. So, according to his work, and he’s been at the Harvard Negotiation Project for well over 30 years, and what he’s found is we’ll combine those.

So, if we want to give appreciation, give appreciation. The most common blunder is, is that we combine coaching and evaluation. And as he shared with me a little while ago, he said, you know, Pete, you can deliver the best coaching advice anyone has ever received or the best coaching conversation anyone has ever experienced, and if you combine it with evaluation, guess what happens? They basically just totally lose all of the coaching and focus on the evaluation, “So, why did I score a three out of five on this?”

And so, he said for the maximum impact to ensure that feedback is received and is actionable, the best thing we can possibly do, focus on evaluation for one conversation, and then have the coaching conversation following up on that. So, don’t mix them. And, sometimes, again, in the interest of efficiency, we mix the two, we’re like, “Hey, we’ll do the evaluation and then spend time coaching so that the person can really put this into practice.” Unfortunately, even though it may intuitively make sense or feel like it makes sense, in practice it has an opposite effect and actually leads to real challenges in the development and adoption of new behaviors.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a very helpful rule of thumb, that I think that could take you far just following that forever. So, you were saying, “Let us not mingle the coaching and evaluation bits of feedback in the same conversation because we’re going to miss out on that coaching goodness.” Now, is it kosher to mingle appreciation and coaching, or are those too helpful to be separated?

Craig Dowden
Again, the safest route, based on the work that he has done, is to separate them. Keep them because, again, it’s going to be around, “Hey, great job. This is wonderful. Really appreciate your efforts on this.” So, it keeps the conversation focused on, “We want you to feel recognized and acknowledged for your contribution.” Once again, as soon as you throw coaching into the mix, the person may forget about the appreciation and then focus on, “What are different strategies I can use around this?”

So, keeping our focus on what kind of feedback do we want to deliver, and then keep or maintain that focus on delivering that message. And then, later, you can talk, again, have a coaching conversation. So, all of those pieces can be much more effective in terms of supporting behavioral change and/or maintenance in someone else by being cognizant of those three different pieces of feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool. Well, now, you have a particular approach you recommend when it comes to performance reviews. Tell us about this.

Craig Dowden
Well, I think it’s basically a do-it-yourself employee review, and Daniel Pink, an international bestselling author, talks about this in “Drive” around having do-it-yourself performance reviews. And there’s lots of fundamental reasons as to why this is so effective. So, number one is that so feedback becomes less threatening through familiarity.

So, every month, if you and I are going to sit down, Pete, and have a conversation about performance, then I’m going to basically hand the reins over to you and say, “Okay, tell me how you did. Tell me where you think you thrived. Tell me where there were some challenges.” And so, in that way, what it does is it empowers someone else to be able to deliver their own feedback conversation.

Also, there’s less kind of threat around it because it’s more familiar to them. And it also empowers the other person to highlight some things within their own performance. So, really, it enables someone else to take the lead.

One of the worst things around performance reviews, and how organizations typically do it, is that you’re going to deliver the feedback to me. So, it’s very unidirectional and you’ll essentially stand on high and essentially pronounce judgment on how I’ve done over the past 12 months. By making a do-it-yourself performance review, and do it on a monthly basis, it’s much more common, frequent, routine, and now the individual feels empowered around what they’re going to share with you.

And so, that provides a sense of autonomy. It provides a sense of input. It provides a sense of ownership. And it’s really framed as a learning conversation, which is so essential. And then the benefit to managers, one of the key benefits to leaders and executives and business owners that I worked with, that they’ll talk to me about in terms of their own practices, they’ll have a laundry list of feedback that they want to be able to provide to the person. Well, oftentimes, their employees will tick off the boxes of all the things that they want to share so it takes the pressure off them to deliver that message.

And, secondarily, in some cases, you will volunteer things that I don’t even have on my list. So, it’s a really cool opportunity to be able to get insight that you might not have captured with someone else and, again, without the pressure of trying to figure out, “How can I best frame that conversation?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s also really awesome is that if you are the manager, like you’ve reduced so much of your workload as well.

Craig Dowden
Right. I love that, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And the benefits are huge in terms of, okay, so you’re less defensive because you’re the one generating these things about yourself.

So, are there any kind of key particular prompts that you recommend to structure or to latch onto a DIY review, or is it just like, “Hey, how do you think you did? How about it?”

Craig Dowden
Yeah, great question and I think it’s important to explain to people. And this, again, a major gap around just feedback processes in general is that they’re rarely explained, the purpose is rarely explained. So, leaders, executives, business owners, that I’ve worked with, they’ll talk about. So, what we want to do is make feedback an ongoing part of our DNA. Feedback is not something every six months or 12 months. We want to get to a space where we want to have feedback as a regular part of our organization and our organizational DNA because the world moves in such a fast pace these days. We need to have information. We need to have it readily available.

And so, what we’re going to do is have a monthly performance review where you come in and tell me where you’ve done well and what your successes are as well as some of the challenge areas and even what some proposals around what you think you and I can do to be able to address them. And so, it’s a wonderful way within that prompt. And then once you have that discussion in the first month, you can a check in after the first conversation and ask your employee, “How did that go? What did you think about it? Is there anymore specific direction that I can provide and anything I can do differently?” so you really start to have, open up the dialogue around that space.

And I think another really powerful benefit of this is that by employee sharing their feedback with you, then at the end of the conversation you can say, “Hey, do you mind if I share a couple of components or a couple of observations that I have?” So, it really benefits from the reciprocity principle. If you ask someone how they’re doing, well, they’ll generally ask you how you’re doing. So, it’s a wonderful way to create a bidirectional conversation that really kind of lowers the anxiety on both levels because it’s seen as, “Well, this is cooperative. We need each other in order to paint an accurate picture here.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, how do we deal with, I don’t know, numbers, ratings, rankings, competencies, you know, raises, bonuses, like the numbery things of it all?

Craig Dowden
Well, I think this is where some of the performance review processes are really broken because, like a forced ranking system as an example, right? And this is where a lot of them lose credibility, which is, “Well, we’ve got to have a certain number of stars, and a certain number of average performances, and a certain number of low performances.” So, this is where a lot of organizations are just redefining how they do performance reviews.

Some of the larger more progressive organizations are just getting rid of them altogether and moving it to a more kind of check in type of process. Adobe is an example as one organization that just stopped doing them altogether. And so then, I think this is an opportunity for senior leadership in an organization to start talking about.

So, what is the purpose of feedback? Because if the purpose of feedback is going to be around performance metrics, as an example, well, now, what motivation is there for individuals to disclose what’s going on? So, I think the metrics are an important part of it and how do we achieve it. Now, the process is around, “Okay, so how do we have that feedback conversation so we maximally set people up for success so that they can attain the goals that they set out?”

So, again, fundamentally, so let’s go back to that standard kind of Bell curve example that so many organizations use from a metric standpoint, or a financial incentive standpoint, “Hey, if everybody is knocking the ball out of the park through terrific feedback conversations, isn’t that awesome?” So, I think this is where fundamentally we have to rethink how we deliver incentives and how the feedback system is connected to that and be much more thoughtful around its implementation.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’d be great to be more thoughtful around it, and so I’d like to hear then, you mentioned Adobe and some other. Let’s hear some more best practices with regard to is it kind of more separated with regard to how we’re thinking about raises and promotions and compensation things? It’s kind of a different set of conversations than is the performance reviews or how does that go? Because often, you’re right, I think that these things come together and that can be.

Pete Mockaitis
So, Craig, within this model, how do you think about raises and promotions and compensation sorts of things? Are those like completely different set of conversations, kind of separate from the performance review conversations?

Craig Dowden
Yeah, I think that’s a great question, and they are. They’re separate because you can talk about, “Have the objectives, the goals, what are we trying to achieve be it quarterly, monthly, yearly?” And then that’ll be a different discussion around, “So, how well did I do in terms of achieving those objectives?” And then when we talked about the do-it-yourself performance review, essentially, and that’s something that could be readily integrated into that framework, which is, “Okay, for my Q1 goals, if I’m doing this monthly, how do I think I’m doing? Why do I think that I’m doing as well or not as well as I’m doing?” And then be able to provide that as a counterbalance to that discussion. So, they are issues that would be dealt with separately.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Gotcha. And so then, I’m curious, if we have individuals listening who are thinking, “Boy, DIY do sound really cool.” We have a broken review process that you sort of discussed already also operating. Have you seen just sort of like individual professionals and their managers say, “You know what, this is cool. We’re going to go do it even if nobody else in our organization is.” How does that work?

Craig Dowden
For sure, yeah. One of the challenges is that it can feel awkward, almost like doing a new exercise at the gym. It can feel awkward so I think what’s really important is for both the manager as well as their team can talk about, “Okay, this may be awkward and we may have some stops and starts, and so let’s raise our hand and learn through the process.”

And I think when they have done it, what’s another challenge is that the manager, in particular the leader, almost has a scorecard, and what they may feel is the “right answer.” And so, giving control over to the employee can feel daunting and what’s going to happen, so there’s an uneasiness. And it’s really interesting and almost, to me, the parallel is having a difficult conversation.

I do a lot of work with executives and executive teams. And, particularly, if someone is having conflict with another colleague or other members of the team, when they actually sit down and have the discussion, it’s not nearly as painful or as challenging as they thought. And it’s the exact same thing with do-it-yourself performance reviews. When it’s over, a lot of times I’ll hear the executives say, “Wow, you know what, my employee shared things that I didn’t see, I didn’t have on my list, I didn’t feel was as great of an issue,” or, “I found that the conversation was much more constructive and productive.”

Or, “If they didn’t raise something that I had on my list, it seemed like they appreciated that I didn’t have the same level of defensiveness sharing my feedback with them.” So, there are so many benefits from doing it. Once again, kind of acknowledging that awkwardness. And I think it’s interesting because it is a very different way of approaching things.

And I think the other pieces, too, is that I hear is that then feedback becomes more normalized. It’s part of day to day, so it’s less awkward, so you don’t raise your hand when you only have something to complain about or a bad thing. So, it just becomes a natural extension of the discussion that you have each day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And so then, you have seen then those individuals who just decide, “Screw the broken corporate system that we’re in. We’re going to do this on top of it.” And it works just fine once they get past those kind of awkward adjustment bits.

Craig Dowden
Well, I love that you highlight that because, let’s say, you are working in an organization where they want to hold on to the standard performance review. Well, then there’s nothing that prevents a leader from adding that into the toolkit, and say, “You know what, we’re going to apply this within the traditional, or within our mandated performance review system.”

And what’s interesting, the benefits still translate because, “Now, I’m having regular conversations. You and I are having regular conversations, Pete, and so then we can talk about things. And then when the actual performance review comes up, we’ve laid so much of the groundwork that they’re really straightforward. Very little, if anything, is surprising,” which is the way it should be.

And so, fundamentally, whether or not your organization adopts it at large, or whether or not they resist and that you do it yourself, this strategy can be used regardless.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, so I’d love it if we can maybe do a roleplay or a demonstration of a DIY performance review in action. I mean, I guess part of it is quiet reflective thought on your own before you engage in the conversation. So, let’s say that I did that.

Craig Dowden
Right. That’s right, assuming that, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll make this like, okay, let’s just say you are the owner of my whole company, and I’m an employee who is in charge of making the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast, and we’re having a monthly check-in here. How would we start?

Craig Dowden
Well, I would say, “Pete, thank you for taking the time to come in and meet with me today. As you know, we do do-it-yourself performance review on a monthly basis, really, so we can have an open and constructive dialogue around how things are going. And so, I appreciate you taking the time to go through the questions, reflection questions, and fundamentally what I want us to talk about this afternoon are a couple of things.”

“Number one, how do you feel things are going in terms of the goals that you set out this month? How do you feel that you’re performing? Then, also, what are the gaps? What are some areas where you feel there are possibilities to raise your level of performance? And then, also, what’s some feedback that you have for me? So, how can I do a better job of supporting you in terms of where you are and what you’re trying to achieve? And then, lastly, I would love to be able to share my insights, observations with you to close the conversation, and just talk about the next steps.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Okay, cool. Well, thank you, Craig. I really appreciate you investing the time to do this with all of your many direct reports and it could add up perhaps. And I feel that it’s going smashingly well with regard to the podcast having completed a huge listener survey. It gave me a clear idea of what people are into and seeking those folks out to deliver upon that.”

“I think in terms of the gaps, I think it’s that I’ve not yet sort of systematized an approach so that we can sort of take listener requests, write to guests like very quickly in terms of figuring out how to do that over and over again when it’s a lot harder to do that than to just snag an author who sounds relevant, who’s got a book coming out because they said yes immediately to invitations on the podcast.”

“And my feedback for you, Craig, is that we speak very rarely, and I’d love it if you could provide some more input more frequently into my performance there. So, that’s what I’m thinking right now.”

Craig Dowden
“That’s fabulous. Well, a couple of things, and I’ll certainly add that. That’s valuable feedback and I appreciate it and I agree that if we had an opportunity to speak more, have much more constructive conversations, so I definitely will commit to doing that.”

“A couple of things that I think you touched on in terms of what has been going awesomely well. I’m thrilled to hear that, so congratulations and that’s great news and great feedback. I really appreciate that you took your insights from customer feedback and client feedback that you have so that’s really compelling.”

“And so, what steps, what are some lessons that you’ve learned through the positive feedback you received in terms of what you’re going to continue to do, and then also ideas you may have from what they shared on the positive spectrum around how to potentially move the podcast to another level?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Certainly.” Well, I think we got the idea as far as demonstration goes.

Craig Dowden
And then just add to that, too, and back to systematize the approach, and then, on the flipside, then I would ask questions like, “Okay, that’s great. I think it’s really valuable that you looked at that. What are some ideas that you think could assist you in that? And then how might I be able to support you in systematizing? Do you have the resources that you need?”

So, you kind of counterbalance because sometimes, and the reason I started with the positive is sometimes people will kind of focus right in on the negative, you know, like where you would improve. And so, there can be lessons learned on both sides of the docket, and then you want to ask questions on each of those follow-up questions in each of those domains.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I hear what you’re saying with regard to the reduction and defensiveness because it’s totally like, “Well, hey, I brought it up.”

Craig Dowden
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And even if I didn’t bring it up, it’s like, “I’m already in the zone of having thoughtfully introspected on what are some things I might do better.” And so, it’s not like you’re giving me a jarring sort of state-shifting attack, like, “Here’s how you screwed it up.” “What?”

Craig Dowden
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “No, this is what we’re talking about.” And I’m already in that kind of place so it’s a lot easier.

Craig Dowden
And I love that you said that you brought it up. And I think that’s what’s really important is, well, because let’s say you bring it up, and then I reframe it or I probe a little, and then you get defensive. Then, as a leader, as a business owner, you can come back and say, “Well, Pete, just for a moment, appreciate the response and just I’m following up on something that you raised.” So, sometimes back to dealing with fear or dealing with a trigger, maybe I’m triggered by it. Then this can help raise, bring the discussion back on point, where it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I did raise that, and so I wonder why, what triggered me on that.” So, there’s real richness to that discussion.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. I guess, certainly, if you want to go meta there for a moment with regard to what’s happening and then I don’t think that happen sometimes. It’s probably rare that folks start crying and sharing some deep historical therapy-type elements, but they might. And that might be just the thing for that particular conversation. But it could be just like, “Oh, you know, it’s always been a little bit of a sore spot for me ever since this happened that I’ve been quite conscientious about this sort of thing. It gets me going.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s really good to understand.”

Craig Dowden
For sure. Well, and this is, as an example, I mean, this is what then can bring a conversation back versus if you raise it as the feedback provider versus operating as a feedback facilitator. So, if I get triggered defensively by something I’ve openly shared, that in of itself shows the complexity and complications attached to delivering a feedback, because hearing it from you might trigger me differently than if I’m talking about it myself.

Because if I’m self-anointing and self-identifying, that can feel safer than when you do it. Then it’s like, “Wow, okay, I’m reacting to this.” So, it can be a really powerful moment of self-insight for the individual because they can actually hold up a mirror and say, “Gee, even though this is something that I recognize within myself, if anyone else around here points it out, I can get defensive.”

And then through a conversation with the manager, now they can add that to, “Hey, you may want to be aware of that in terms of how you receive feedback.” So, it can be a really powerful learning mechanism in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. So, we talked a bit about some of the emotions there with regard to removing some of the defensiveness in there. Do you have any other pro tips when it comes to handling some of the emotional bits if folks are scared to talk about stuff, they’re frustrated to revisit things again and again, they’re disappointed that they’re not, you know, maybe they heard some surprises, like, there’s a whole lot of emotion wrapped up in all of this? Any kind of overarching pro tips for working with that well?

Craig Dowden
For sure. Well, a couple of things that you can have that as almost preparatory. So, when we have these, and that’s what’s beautiful about having this as a systematized approach where it’s monthly. You can say, “Okay, during our monthly do-it-yourself performance reviews, there may be times when you feel fearful, frustrated, disappointed in what we’re talking about. How can I best show up to minimize triggering those emotions within you?”

And so, it has, “And what are some things that may lead you to experience this poorly? So, before we even embark on this journey together, you can start to lay out the ground rules about, ‘Hey, if you say purple unicorn, that can tend to trigger me in a particular direction.’ So, then it’s like, “Okay, now, I can manage that.”

The other piece can be around saying, “Well, there may be times when I have to share constructive feedback, critical feedback, in terms of what I see. How can I best deliver that so it’s perceived with positive intent and so I can make it as constructive a message as possible? And then what are some things that I can do if I sense that you are reacting emotionally to be able to address that?”

And so, once again, same thing, where the person is actually sharing the answers to that exam. Now, when you bring that up, then you will already have a preordained conversation about, “Hey, Pete, we did talk about it, and I sense this happening. So, as we agreed, I’m doing X and now it’s, ‘Oh, okay.’” So, it softens that transition.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. That’s handy.

Craig Dowden
And I think for all of us, I mean, as a lifehack, it’s a wonderful opportunity, personally or professionally, to talk to the people in our lives about, “How do I best perceive feedback? How do I prefer to give feedback? What’s the best context? What’s the safest environment? And how can I best share those feelings?”

So, as another example, you can say, “If there’s anything that’s in my approach or what’s happening that’s provoking fear or frustration or disappointment, please raise your hand because to maximize the impact of this discussion and really leverage the power of what we’re doing here, we want to ensure that those emotions are minimized. They may not be eliminated entirely. Our job, collectively, is to figure out how to minimize those so we can have a safe discussion and really talk about what matters. So, in order for us both to get the most out of it, this is what we need. So, anything I can do to facilitate that, let me know.”

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

Craig Dowden
I’ve really appreciated the questions and the comments and the exploration. And I think, to me, the most important piece is the research shows that the vast majority of us desire feedback. We want to receive feedback. We want to figure out how we can stretch ourselves and grow. And so, for us, as feedback providers and receivers, it’s critical to develop both of those skills. And, again, I think, to me, the research in that is so important, that in order to be effective, we have to excel in both and be really committed to doing that and being curious explorers when we’re fulfilling both roles.

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

Craig Dowden
Favorite quote. I’m not sure if it’s a quote. Maybe it’s a practice. Something that I think is really powerful for me is around, “The answer is always no unless you ask the question.” So, it’s something that, for me, personally, as well as a lot of clients that I work with, sometimes we can put up artificial barriers and assume there’s going to be a negative, like, “No, this isn’t going to happen.”

And I feel like it’s so empowering for us to recognize that just by asking the question, asking someone to be a guest on a podcast, asking someone to interview, asking someone to have a coffee to discuss a business opportunity, if we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to play the game, then the answer is going to be no, and we’re going to have a losing hand. And so, to remind ourselves of the power in asking questions.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what I like about that is, it’s sort of like there’s a guaranteed zero percent chance if you don’t ask. And even if you’ve upgraded yourself to a 1% chance, you know, divided by zero it’s like an infinite increase.

Craig Dowden
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not like you’re ten times more likely to get a reply, or infinitely more likely to get a reply, in your favor even if you’re only going to like a half a percent or 1% chance. And I’m impressed. I think one guy, I did a big blogpost, I don’t know, on a different website. But he reached out to just tons of people, and say, “Hey, do you want to talk about consulting over coffee?” And he had a very detailed notebook about who to reach out to and what the results were. I was like, “Whoa! Tell me, how often do people say yes?”

And he had computed, because he reached to like more than a hundred people, it was like 28% of folks said yes to a total stranger to like chat with him about career stuff. And that was mind-blowing to me. Like, on average, if you ask four strangers, you’d expect one of them to say yes. That’s pretty cool.

Craig Dowden
It is. And I think, again, a wonderful piece of reflection for us around, “Okay, how much do I get in my own way of advancing the goals that are most important to me? So, if I’m okay with receiving a no, then that’s okay. Then I think that’s wonderful, and so why not, right?” And so, I would rather, I feel it’s important that we remind ourselves that it’s better for us to put it out there and then be told no, rather than not do it, and then you get zero percent, as you said, and 28% of people like to help. That’s the other really interesting thing.

When you ask people, “Do you like helping other people?” Most people say, “Yeah, it feels good and I try to do that as much as possible.” Yet, we can be really reluctant to ask other people just, again, to talk about consulting, or to talk about how to be an effective leader, or to build a great podcast, and then we’re eliminating particular potential resources for us to learn from and grow relationships with and thrive.

One quote that did come to mind, to be able to circle back to your question, I remember interviewing Jim Whitehurst, the CEO of Red Hat, and so they just finished, I think, the largest acquisition ever, multibillion dollars. And he talked about, during his time, he said, “People have an amazing capacity for forgiveness if you give them the opportunity to do so.” And I thought that was very powerful as well.

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

Craig Dowden
Oh, that’s so challenging. Every piece of research, to me, there’s just golden nuggets. I love the one which showed that empathy is the third strongest predictor of executive excellence. So, that was done by the Management Research Group. So, the third strongest predictor of executive excellence out of 22. And then it was the strongest predictor of ethical leadership out of the 22. And the top two were strategy and communication.

And so, I think what’s really fascinating about their research is not only is empathy the third strongest predictor of executive excellence, you can make a pretty compelling argument as to empathy informs our ability to think strategically as well as communicate effectively. So, I feel like the fact that empathy is either directly or indirectly related to what I call the holy trinity of executive excellence. I think that’s really, really powerful and, especially, considering how empathy is going down.

Our levels of empathy are reducing on a pretty substantial rate, and it’s been identified as a key competitive advantage for organizations and executives, so it’s this really powerful piece of research which I love to cite and talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! Do you recall the author, journal, article?

Craig Dowden
So, it was out of the Management Research Group, so they’re in the northeastern U.S., and they had a whitepaper attached to it. So, they sent me some of their individual data as well. So, they have whitepapers on their website. It was over a half a million people contributed to that. I referenced a study in one of the articles I wrote for the Financial Post. So, they have one internal whitepaper, so they have hundreds of thousands of 360 feedbacks of paper on, and that was a really compelling study that they put together.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Craig Dowden
Wow! So tough. Anything by Dan Pink, Adam Grant, Marshall Goldsmith, I think is exceptional. One book that I love to refer because it’s relatively unknown is by William Ury who wrote “Getting To Yes.” So, a lot of people know that book. My favorite of the trilogy that he wrote was called “The Power of a Positive No.” And I just found the concept so really compelling in terms of its application and execution.

So, essentially, what his argument is, and he does a lot of the toughest international negotiations and crisis situations, and he talks about how people are generally awful at saying no. And because we’re so afraid of hurting someone else, and so either we do one of two things. We either avoid the other person, or ghost them altogether, or we just say yes to things we’re not prepared to do.

So, in his book, he provides this really awesome methodology to be able to deliver a positive no which basically goes, “Yes. No. Yes. Question mark.” So, essentially, “Hey, Pete, I appreciate that that’s really important to you. The timeline for me is not going to work because of these competing commitments. How about we do X?” So, it’s, affirm the other person, affirm my own position, and then propose a solution with a question mark, say, “Hey, I’m prepared to collaborate,” and it’s just absolutely golden.

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

Craig Dowden
Tool? I love StrengthsFinder. I find doing a StrengthsFinder is really powerful and I love having access, I subscribe to HBR, so I love, I have to say, I really enjoy getting the articles, blogposts that come through there.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Craig Dowden
Wow, a favorite habit. I would say there’s a great book called “The ONE Thing” that was written by Keller Williams, the real estate…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Craig Dowden
And it’s amazing. And so, I strive to, each day, say, “What’s that one thing that if I do it will move the needle more than anything else?” And so, really be focused on the one thing, making sure by the end of each day, I have done my one thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks that they say, “Yes, Craig, that’s brilliant”?

Craig Dowden
I think the power of the positive no is really powerful. I think, really, the importance of letting go. So, the power of “I know.” So, when I have discussions with people and they have a conflict with someone, again, personally or professionally, I’ll say, “Okay. Well, have you talked to Pete about this?” “No.” “Well, how come? Like, what was…?” And then they’ll say, “Well, I know how he’s going to respond.” And I’ll say, “Okay. Well, how do you know that?” They’ll say, “Well, I just know, okay?”

And I’ll say, “Okay. Well, have you tried to approach him about this topic and then he shut you down or a similar topic and he reacted this way?” “No.” “Have you ever been in a social setting where you’ve observed him react in that way?” “No.” “Have you heard third hand, like around the watercooler that he’s done this?” “No.” And then it’s, “Hey, you know what, are you sure that he’s going to…how do you know this?” And I think that’s really powerful in terms of challenging our own insights.

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

Craig Dowden
CraigDowden.com is the best way, and also @craigdowden on Twitter, and you can use my name on LinkedIn.

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

Craig Dowden
Well, I would say to think about the impact that you want to have on the world and each day, both in any organization or community that you serve, and be mindful of what your core values are. And at the end of every day, sit back and see the degree to which you’re living your core values. And a lot of my coaching clients, I do it as well, do a quick five-minute take on, “Hey, did I do today what I set out to do? Am I living my values every day?” And a lot of research shows the better we are at accomplishing that, the more effective we are and the more likely we are to achieve our goals.

Pete Mockaitis
And happier, too, I imagine.

Craig Dowden
And much happier, yeah, exactly. An added bonus.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, Craig, this has been fun. Thank you and good luck in all your adventures.

Craig Dowden
Thanks. Well, I look forward to going back to our performance review and staying in touch. So, I’ll commit to that.

Jul 10
0

462: Increasing Your Self-Awareness to Improve Your Leadership with Pamela McLean

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Pam McLean says: "Our presence is an intervention."

Pamela McLean reveals how your inner landscape helps and hinders your leadership capabilities.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The most common obstacle to developing your leadership potential
  2. How to address self-limiting beliefs
  3. The most critical internal areas to develop

About Pamela 

Pamela McLean is the CEO and cofounder of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, which provides consulting to organizations worldwide. Working in the arenas of clinical and organizational psychology, and leadership coaching and development, Pam has worked with hundreds of organizational leaders and seasoned professionals inside organizations and in solo practice to deepen and strengthen their coaching skills. Pam is the author and co-author of several books, articles and whitepapers focused on coaching, human development and transformational learning. Her titles include: The Completely Revised Handbook of Coaching and LifeForward, Charting the Journey Ahead.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank You Sponsors!

  • Get insurance the quick, easy, and affordable way with Policygenius.com.
  • Learn a new language anytime, anywhere with Babbel.com

Pamela McLean Interview Transcript

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

Pam McLean
So happy to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. And I, first, want to hear a little bit about your fondness for birdwatching.

Pam McLean
That’s great. Well, I’ve been a birdwatcher for a long time and it is interesting that there are a lot of birdwatchers in the world. It turns out, I grew up on the prairie right on the border of Manitoba up in the corner of North Dakota, Minnesota, and when one grows up on a farm on a prairie, the appreciation for wildlife is accentuated. And I’ve just carried that through all of my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And so, can you identify the birds then readily, “That’s a yellowtail, blue belly…”?

Pam McLean
There’s always room for improvement, but I do have a repertoire that I can identify, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, birdwatching, it seems like a relaxing hobby as opposed to, I don’t know, bungee jumping.

Pam McLean
Much more relaxing and it’s everywhere. You don’t have to go find a bungee jump. There are birds everywhere so it’s a wonderful thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m intrigued. So, you’ve also done a lot of human watching and observing and coaching and training of coaches. Boy, there are so many things I want to dig into but I’m just going to start to dig and ask. Coaches really have a privileged way of a view, I’d say, of the human condition and how we really operate deep down. So, I’d love to know what have you found is the most surprising, or striking, or reliable insight into how we humans tick that you’ve discovered from all your decades of coaching and coach training?

Pam McLean
Great question. Definitely a broad one. There are several things that come to my mind. One is in the world of coaching, especially leadership coaching, which is really what I have spent the last 30 years in here at Hudson, one theme is that almost all leaders want to do their best work. They want to be at their best. So, that’s quite something to work with people who are willing to continue to grow and develop. That is, I think, one of the unique features of leadership coaching.

Another one that is interesting, Pete, and I spent my first half of my career as a clinical psychologist and then now as a leadership coach, or running a leadership coaching organization. One of the other things that I see as a theme is that change is hard for all of us. That to make a change, even what might seem like a small change, takes a lot of conscious effort, and that is part of what makes coaching valuable, to have someone walking alongside you and helping to look at how you can build some practices and continue to make some shifts that are really going to matter for you.
But it strikes me,

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m reminded of the oddest things sometimes in the podcast interviews, and now I’m thinking about an old Dane Cook, a comedian, joke about someone in the bad romantic relationship, and her friends are saying, “You should just get out. You should just get out of there. You just get out. Just go.” And she’s like, “Well, it’s not that simple, Karen. My CDs are in his truck.” And I just think there’s so much truth to that. Like, “Yeah, there’s a few changes that have to happen, and that’s hard to do.”

Pam McLean
Yeah, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, yet I find that reassuring. So, my last person I interviewed was a Navy Seal, and so he’s sort of speaking likewise about how, yeah, that’s a scary thing to do, standup comedy for the first time as he was venturing into this or that. And so, it’s reassuring that even sort of like the toughest and most elite among us also struggle with doing change. And I guess I might want to get your take on why do you suppose that is? Is it just habit and comfort just…has a pull on us?

Pam McLean
Well, yeah, I think that’s right, that it does have a pull on us, and we know from the neuroscience as well that we build these, we could almost think of them as like grooves in our brain that we’re on autopilot when we’re in habit. And so, if I’m going to shift my way of being, here’s a kind of common one that might come up in coaching. I’m just thinking of those.

You know, as an early manager, here’s one that can be common, that someone goes, “Oh, gosh, I don’t really want to get my person feedback because it makes me kind of uncomfortable. I’d like to be liked. I haven’t really done much of it before.” And so, to rewire to see that providing feedback to someone that you’re managing is actually an important part of developing them, and everybody wants to grow. That’s quite different then, the mindset that, “I might make them feel badly,” or, “That would be uncomfortable for me to do.”

So, it takes us quite a bit of time to deconstruct what gets in the way, to really look at what the underlying obstacles are, and to pay attention to them. There’s this tendency that we have when we want to change something, and we look at, “What do I need to do? What do I need to do? Just give me the answers. Tell me what to do.” And what we know in coaching is that what we need first is to notice how we are now, “How I’m showing up now, and to really develop a heightened awareness for the habit that I’m

Here’s one that I hear often, is people talk about how often they say yes before even thinking. And we often talk about, in working with coaches and development, that when we learn to say no, we know how to set a boundary and that becomes important for us in our work with others. But it’s not as simple as, “Boy, I say yes all the time, so let me just start saying no.” First, we have to notice, “How many times in a day do I say yes? And what happens? What’s the cost of that? What triggers that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, it really is because, I think, it’s dead on in terms of, “Okay, what do I need to do?” is a natural question and, particularly for me, one of my top strengths is Activator, it’s like, “Let’s go do it. Make it happen.” And so, but that awareness strikes me as really a potent means of accelerating change because you start to get emotional and visceral and real about it. It’s not like, “Yes, I say yes too much and that’s bad and I should say no more.”

That’s one thing intellectually, as opposed to, “Oh, my gosh, I have taken stock at how this is devastating my life.” And, not to be overdramatic, it really can. It’s like, “I have no time to rest, to do what’s important to me. I’m always serving everybody in every way and urgently and frantically and distractedly with mediocre quality because I haven’t said no enough to prioritize and focus and deliver excellence on those things that really matter there.”

So, I really like that because some might say awareness, they can sort of brush it aside, like, “Yadda, yadda, yadda, those coaches would say that. They can book some more hours and they drudge up your past and the awareness.” But, really, I see it as a bridge to getting that emotional stuff going.

Pam McLean
Well, you make such great point because we can’t think ourselves through change and we have to have the head and heart connected to make those connections, so we have to be in the moment with ourselves, paying attention to ourselves, noticing what triggers us, so you’re spot on there, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really want to dig in. So, in your book Self as Coach, Self as Leader, you sort of lay out six key dimensions to think through with regard to yourself and how that shows up as a leader and enriches folks. So, I’d love it if maybe you could talk us through a little bit of each of the dimensions, like what is it, why is it important, and how do we get better at that?

Pam McLean
Yeah, happy to. And I might start by giving it a little bit of context to say that, in the life of a leader or a coach, we know we have skill-based competencies that are must-haves. It’s kind of like our IQ is the cost of admission, that’s just a must-have. But often, most often,  And I use this phrase, “Our use of  We do many things at Hudson, working inside organizations, providing coaching services, and we also have a yearlong program where leaders come and go through this process of developing coaching skills.

Often, leaders will say, “Oh, I just want the tools. I just want the tools and I think I’ll be good.” And we go, “Oh, here’s the deal. ” So, our ability to use our self…

Pete Mockaitis
How dare you?

Pam McLean
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
You want to be a tool?

Pam McLean
It requires that we cultivate our internal landscape. And some of us are more inclined to do this, some fields of study bring us into this territory more than others, but it is in that cultivation of our internal landscape, whether we’re a coach or a leader, that really allows us to show up in a way that maximizes our ability to work with others, to inspire others, to lead others, to develop others.

So, one of the things I start with in the book is I talk a bit about this notion that, well, in coaching our work is not the same as in psychology or psychotherapy where we might naturally go back and take a look at the family of origin and do some deconstruction and some reconstructing. And, yet, what is true is that all of us human beings have some kind of a family of origin, and that who we are is so significantly impacted by our early years.

And so, it’s helpful for us, as leaders and coaches, to understand what has shaped us into our adult years. And that, of course, parallels some of what we do, certainly what we do as a coach when we’re working with someone. If you just imagine that some people might call our ways being, we have self-limiting beliefs. You hear this, right? And others might say that we have narratives that we live in. Or I often talk about stories that we have. And I talk in the book about how a story that I have, that is a lifelong story, I grew up on a cattle ranch in a very rural area. There was a lot of positive strokes for being strong and absolutely, extra credit, for never asking for help.

And so, that was a story. It worked so well as I was growing up. And that’s how we develop these. We’re smart, resourceful, little people, and we figure out, “What do I need to do? Maybe if I go small, it’ll work better in my family. Or, maybe if I talk a lot, it’ll work better. Or, maybe if I cry.” We figure out what ways of being we need to develop in order to, “Make life work as best it can in my family,” because all families have some level of dysfunction, right?

So, my “be strong and extra credit for not asking for help” was clever when I was growing up, but as a leader of an organization, which is a role I’ve been in for over a couple of decades now, it’s not an effective strategy. And so, it has required me to really be attuned to that old story and to do my work noticing how often that can show up in order that I can expand my capacity, in order that I can see the value of asking for input, asking for help, and I can see the cost of going it alone.

And so, that is a starting point for the  And in those six dimensions that I write about, they are really lenses into our internal landscape. We’ve talked for a long time, in the earlier book I wrote, I talked about this notion of self as coach, but I really dig into it in this book. And so, these are dimensions of self. It’s more than EQ. EQ is about knowing our emotions, managing our emotions. But these are dimensions that include our presence.

I have this colleague that says this wonderful phrase, “Our presence is an intervention.” Now, imagine that as a leader or as a coach. The very way I show up in the first moments with you is an intervention. And so, to hone my presence, for most of us, and certainly in the world we’re living in today, requires a lot of practice. And it’s not just closing the screen, putting your cellphone away, it’s paying attention to the chatter that’s in my head, the biases or the assumptions that I might bring with me into a particular conversation as a leader or as a coach.

And so, it has many layers to it and it requires for us practices that allow us to strengthen our presence. And it’s not surprising that neuroscience has taught us that mindfulness practice helps us tune in to the internal chatter, helps us learn how to settle and to be in the moment, and to be  And I don’t know, Pete, if you have a mindfulness practice, but every time I’m with a group of people, and I ask, “How many of you have a mindfulness practice?”

First of all, the number of people in any number of settings has grown so much over the past several years. Then, when you ask the next question, “How has that changed you?” It’s quite compelling to listen to people talk about how a practice that might only take 5 or 10 minutes a day, you don’t have to sit on a pillow, you don’t have to have your meditation room, or a candle burning. You can do it at your desk with the door closed. You can do it as you walk if you’re able to do that. That it changes our attention to self and our ability to be there more fully for another. So, that’s one area, is

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Thank you. And with the mindfulness practice, I mean, there’s many such practices. But if you were to make a recommendation for folks who have none, by the way, what percentages are you seeing these days? What proportion of folks are you saying that have a mindfulness practice?

Pam McLean
So, I may be working with many people who are quite invested in their own development. So, when I say 40%, that’s probably higher than the average, but I’m always impressed by how many people are taking this on. And there are some really great apps on the phone that are helpful for those who want to just dip into it. And I don’t have my phone sitting right here or I would tell you a couple. I think one is Calm, but there are three or four that are quite well known, quite effective. Some of them cost absolutely nothing. Insight is the one that I think I like, but they are a great support.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So, that’s the presence side of things, just how you show up can impact folks, be an intervention, whether you’re frenetic and frenzied or calm and listening and that sort of thing. So, let’s shift over from presence to empathy now.

Pam McLean
Yeah, so empathy is such an important one, and in coaching it’s our glue. In the field of psychology, you often hear about the term, “a working alliance.” We have to have this connection with the person that we’re working with in order for anything to happen, for conversations that matter to unfold. It provides that safety, it provides that sense of being seen, and it is bedrock in our work.

And what I talk about in the book is that we could imagine there’s a continuum. And on the one end of the continuum, I am almost disconnected from the human being in front of me. I don’t see, when you’re having a difficult moment, or maybe tearing up, or getting frustrated, I just don’t clock that, I don’t connect in that way. The far end, the other end of the continuum, when you feel badly, I feel badly. When you’re upset, I’m upset.

And so, this empathy requires a calibration because neither end of that continuum allows us to be at our best with another. But I use this phrase, “The ability to walk in someone’s shoes without wearing them.” So, the ability to imagine what this experience is like for you without taking it on, without taking it home, and at the end of the day continuing to think about it, worry about it, wonder about it.

And so, to take another’s perspective, to walk in their shoes without lacing them up and staying there, that is where we want to be, calibrating our  And it’s so interesting for people to explore this, and to notice where they might be, and where the recalibration might be. And there’s, for some, a natural inclination to want to take care of others.

I, sometimes, say it’s like handing someone the box of Kleenex, and you start to feel badly, or you’re upset. And if I hand you, metaphorically, a box of Kleenex, I really am now drawn into your story, and you’re not able to fully share all that you might want to share.

Pete Mockaitis
You say the handing of the box of Kleenex, is it like a distancing?

Pam McLean
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “You take care of yourself now. Tidy up.”

Pam McLean
“That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough,” right? “Now, get yourself together,” or, “Everything is going to be okay.” We’ve all been in those situations where we’re going through something that’s hard, and even good friends will say, “You know, you’re really strong. You’re going to be fine. Oh, I know that you’re going to get through this.” And it’s a conversation stopper because that’s not where I am at that time.

And so, having that ability to stay with, to connect with, and be with someone wherever they are, in many ways, is a bit of an art for us and certainly requires that presence, that mindfulness to maximize

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really helpful there in terms of don’t say, “Everything’s okay. You’re going to be super strong,” or hand them a box of Kleenex in terms of sort of shutting it down. But do kind of imagine what it’s like to experience that and to be there but without taking it home or to own those shoes. So, I get what we’re going for here in terms of, okay, avoid those extremes, utterly disconnected, and complete unity of feeling. But how do you recommend one adjusts? Like, if we need to notch it up because we’re heavily disconnected, or we need to notch it down because we’re crying and wrecked for the rest of the day because we’ve had such a conversation with someone, how do we do that?

Pam McLean
Well, I think we need input from others. So, getting feedback and perspectives from others is always helpful. But there’s a very interesting bit of work that is useful in empathy, and that is the notion that when we are able to take good care of ourselves, it increases our ability to be empathic. And it makes sense when you think about it.

So, as I’m more mindful of my, and connected to myself, able to pay attention to what my needs are, it seems to impact our empathic

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that makes sense both in terms of, okay, you’re exercising empathy to yourself and to another, as well as just the actual results of your self-care.

Pam McLean
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
One of my favorite studies is about the seminarians who were learning about the good Samaritan bible story, and then they placed a Confederate person who was coughing and in need of help. The seminarists didn’t too well with regard to helping out this person like you might hope even though that’s going to be their jobs.

And the main variable they’re testing was those who were told they were behind schedule had to rush and hurry up and get their assignment turned in, helped far less than those who were in a calmer place and felt less stressed, and more resourced to help out when someone was in need. And so, I think that’s sort of a double whammy with regard to that self-care.

Pam McLean
Yeah, and it’s a great comment because you’re really connecting presence and empathy in that story. I often say there are 5 minutes and there are 5 minutes. It’s just a matter of the way that we show up and get present and connected, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. Those who are reading the transcripts are not going to capture the power of what you just said, but it’s hitting home for me. Thank you.

Pam McLean
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, awesome. So, we talked about presence and empathy. How about range of feelings?

Pam McLean
Yes, range of feelings is an interesting one that connects back to how our early years were. And this notion that most of us—here’s a story I tell in the book about, I have a colleague whose early years, she’s Italian, her parents were immigrants, they came to this country, opened a café in an urban area, an Italian restaurant, and a large family, a lot of yelling and screaming and getting angry and getting happy. And these emotions just came and went, and it was all part of the general course of any day.

And I grew up in a northern European family. My grandparents came from Scotland. They were pretty buttoned down, never too happy, never too angry. And so, these ways of being, the way that we grow up impacts our repertoire of feelings and the way that we judge some feelings.

I like to say . And, as a coach, and as a leader perhaps as well, in order to work with a broad range of people, we need to be at ease with a broad range of feelings. If I am uncomfortable with anger, and I am working with a client who’s angry, I will not give much space for that to show up or I’ll be very uncomfortable when it

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Pam McLean
And the same can be said for tears, or whatever it might be. So, the work of a coach is so different than the work of a dentist or an accountant. We have to have this work invested in expanding our repertoire so that we can work with as many different sorts of people as possible.

Pete Mockaitis
That totally makes sense. And I guess I’m just thinking about all kinds of situations where usually I’m visualizing, stereotypically, I guess, a man who’s strong and quiet, and then they encounter crying, it’s like, “There’s no crying in baseball.” Or, it’s sort of like there’s no internal comfort with the feeling and, thusly, when an outside person is emoting in that, it’s just uneasy, like, “Uggghh, I want to get out of here immediately.” So, yeah, how do you work on that?

Pam McLean
One thing I think is helpful is, again, back to self-awareness, is to do some monitoring around what my go-to feelings are, those ones I’m naturally at ease with and those that are on my no-go list that I just don’t like to go to. I think, first, building awareness of what my range of feelings is and where I might extend myself, and then finding those safe, small, little steps to step into that territory is at least a good

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I’d love to get your quick take on the menu of feelings so that we might do a little bit of a checklist inventory there. I’m thinking about the movie Inside Out now. But how would you lay out the array of feelings to see how our repertoire is?

Pam McLean
Yes, so here’s a general way. I think of it as, again, a continuum where perhaps at the lowest level of feelings, or near that edge, I might be working in that sphere of, you know how people used to talk about mad, sad, glad? And as we go along that continuum, I’m really able to build a repertoire that’s much broader than that. And, more importantly, I’m able to understand and experience the reality that I can have two almost diametrically opposed feelings simultaneously, that it is possible for me to feel deep grief and joy at the same time. We’re able to do this.

And, as well, as I build my repertoire, I’m able to see and experience the reality that there are different levels of intensity of any one feeling. So, when someone says, “I’m angry,” that will mean something for you that might be different then for me. So, we have to know, “What does that mean? On a scale of 1 to 5, how strong is that anger, or that sadness, or whatever it might be?”

So, I think that in the world of coaching, and certainly in leadership as well, for us to have a depth of understanding about the range of feelings, the intensity of feelings, the possibility that feelings that seem contradictory can actually be overlapping and simultaneously experienced, that ability to really have a rich collection of accessible feelings

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, just for kicks, could you name a few?

Pam McLean
Well, I think that on the list of feelings that we feel comfortable with, it’s all of the – I’m speaking cultural-specific perhaps here – it’s happy, it’s joyful, gleeful, all of those kinds of things. And that feelings that’s so often we don’t like to go to are the anger, the rage, the grief, and the ones in between, are the frustration, annoyance, right? The vocabulary is expansive in this area.

I think what is most helpful for us, if we want to take this on, is to pay attention to, “What my repertoire is, what my go-to feelings are in my day and day out life.” And that helps us see, “Where might I expand? Where might I grow more

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And so, thinking about the fourth area there, the boundaries and systems, how should we think about that?

Pam McLean
Perhaps I’ll just talk a little about systems, and we can have some fun with that. The notion that in the work of coaching and leading, to have a sense of our boundaries, how permeable our boundaries are, what happens when they’re too tight or when they’re too porous? I have a wonderful friend, Pat Adson, who talks about this metaphor that goes like this. Imagine that we both have a garden, and your garden has a fence around it and a gate, as does mine. Yours has weeds, flowers, vegetables, as does mine. And that I look at your garden, without asking permission, I walk in your garden and I start doing your weeding for you. I have now lost my boundary, and I’m lost in your story.

So, imagine as a coach, you come to me and say, “Oh, my gosh, I’m just up against the wall. I just found out that my whole department is being eliminated. I don’t even have enough money for rent for next month. What am I going to do?” And I go, “Oh, let me just think about this. I think I know someone who can do…” I’m doing your weeding for you as opposed to being able to step back and go, “So, let’s just stop for a minute and see what’s most important in this,” and be able to see this experience through the other’s eyes, and help them see it, as opposed to getting in and rescuing or colluding, or whatever we might do when we walk in someone else’s garden without permission.

And this area is very subtle for a coach. For a leader, I think it so often comes in the form of hearing about a situation and, instead of stepping back and asking some questions and thinking alongside someone, you move into telling someone what to do, just giving them your answer, and without any regard for what’s unique about this for them. So, this notion of boundaries turns out to be really critical in our ability to help someone do their own growing as opposed to wanting to do it for

Pete Mockaitis
So, many of these boundaries are just for your own behavior.

Pam McLean
They are. They are. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to, “I’m not going to allow you to cross this boundary.” It’s like, “I’m not going to cross this boundary.”

Pam McLean
Yes. Yes, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. You know, I was talking to someone the other day in the field of drug and alcohol, and we were having this great conversation about it. It’s so glaring in this that so often what becomes the biggest hurdle is in the family system, that collusion, that continually rescuing someone. And if someone can hold from a boundary and resist doing that, it allows the other to take the steps that are either going to lead to growth, or maybe take them to where they need to go, before they decide that they’re ready to make a

So, yeah, it’s powerful territory for us. And some of us are more inclined than others to want to help, to want to rescue. Some of us are very uncomfortable when we see someone suffering, and in order to manage ourselves, or to help ourselves feel better, we run in with our cape, and rescue instead of stepping back and helping someone see themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, in that alcohol context, what are some of the behaviors of family members that are counterproductive even though they think they’re helping out?

Pam McLean
Well, I suppose it can take many, many forms. Coming to the rescue, often I think coming to the rescue with a financial aid, or any number of things, that simply facilitate through that kind of collusion, no

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So, you sort of prevent the feeling of consequences, ramifications, rock bottom, unpleasantness that can be the force for change.

Pam McLean
Yeah. And so, we could go all the way back to that story I told earlier about the early manager who has a hard time giving feedback, that because their boundary is not yet developed, and they’re worried they’re going to hurt their feelings, or something. So, when one’s boundaries gets stronger, we have the ability to stay in our own garden and help someone observe themselves, or share observations, or offer feedback knowing that this is a part of how we help people

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Then how about embodiment?

Pam McLean
Yes, so this wonderful woman, Wendy Palmer, who wrote a book called Leadership Embodiment, and she says, “The way we sit and stand changes the way we think and feel.” And I love that. The notion that, back to our earlier stories, that if living in my family was smartest for me to play it small, and I bring this all the way into my adult years, and I want to have, people often talking leadership development, about executive presence, and yet my chest is a little caved in, and I’m just not showing up as fully there, and strong, and standing tall, and taking up all of my space. They are embodiment, our ability to embody that which we are as coach or leader is a powerful source of strength for us and a way to center ourselves.

We’re not living, although many of us try from the neck up, right, we have an entire body. And so, to be able to fully experience our body, to pay attention to the somatic triggers that show up, that help inform what might happen next, and to center ourselves fully in the moment. It helps us in every way that we’ve just talked about, it helps us be more present, it helps us connect with the other, it helps us tune into our own feelings, and it helps us hold boundaries that are going to be more helpful in our

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love it if maybe you could lay out, again, a couple menu options, if you will, in terms of, boy, embodiment A, B, C, D each create dramatically different yet helpful emotional states from which to operate.

Pam McLean
Yes, and I think that one can have a lot of fun experimenting in this area, so certainly even some of the martial arts can be a great way to explore your body and to learn how to live in your body from the head down to your feet, or yoga might, or a regular even a breathing exercise that we engage in. Three deep breaths that go all the way down to the belly, and that you slowly exhale is a way to get closer to what’s happening with all of us, and to get out of that tendency to be in our head. So, the wonderful thing is that our body is always here, right? And so, to be able to really center ourselves fully is at our disposal every

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, courage, we’ve talked with a few guests recently about courage, but I want to go six for six. What do you have to say about courage?

Pam McLean
Well, I think that in the work of a coach or a leader, courage is one of the big differentiators and it connects to, in many ways, it’s the culmination of everything we’ve talked about. So, in coaching, it might be the courage to share an observation that is a little bit uncomfortable but that you know the other cannot see. In leadership, it’s certainly back to that early manager and all the way to a senior leader, the ability to share feedback, to share observations that are going to help somebody grow.

So often we live in a world that shrinks away from being courageous. And people often say, “Well, how do I build my courage?” And I think we look at what are small acts of courage that we can engage in in our everyday life. Pick two or three and build a practice around  The people that come to leaders, who come to coaches, come to coaches because there’s something that they know is not working as well as they wanted to, or there’s something that is important for them to shift that they haven’t been able to do on their own.

And the reality for all of us is we can only see, we only have this, the view of ourselves is a limited one. And in our work with another, what a coach can bring to that work is that which I can see. And when I am willing to share that, then something of meaning happens in this relationship. So, if, for example, I’m coaching someone who wants to be recognized, who feels that every time they sit down at a senior team meeting, they’re not taken seriously as they want to be taken, or they’re not listened to, or that when it’s their idea, nobody says anything, but when somebody else does, they’re, “Oh, fantastic

And what you notice in the coaching, in the dynamics of the relationship is that this person is, at every turn and every conversation, highly deferential, “Well, I’m not sure this might be…” And so, for the coach to be able to say, “Oh, I want to stop for a minute and share an observation. What I notice is how often blah, blah, blah,” right? And so, that takes some courage for us. And that is one of the ways, as coaches, that we can really provide value for that leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pam, this is so much good stuff. I want to make sure that we don’t have an uber long episode in responding to my listener feedback. So, tell me, is there anything else you really think is important for professionals to know about your world of coaching expertise before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Pam McLean
No, I think maybe in my final comment might be that what we’re really talking about here are kind of meta skills that have an enormous impact on how we are able to effectively show up in our roles as a leader or coach, and there is no destination. This is a journey. We’re always in development.

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

Pam McLean
Well, here’s one. I have a colleague in the U.K., Edna Murdoch, who has a quote, she says, “Who you are is how you coach.” And that just speaks so much, gets to the heart of this work on self as coach. Who we are is how we coach, it’s how we lead, it’s how we show up. And so, we need to know who we are.

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

Pam McLean
Well, so many different areas. I think that in the world we’re living in today, the work that’s happening in neuroscience is particularly relevant for us to understand that the science of the brain, the science of the body, is more important than ever. And so, I definitely dip into that regularly.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Pam McLean
A couple that I’m crazy about recently, there’s a book Tasha Eurich wrote, INSIGHT—

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, we had her on the show.

Pam McLean
It’s fantastic. I think she just hits it on the nail that we have to have this input from others to see all of our self. Another one—who would be great on your show—is James Hollis who wrote his most recent book Living an Examined Life. Fantastic, a short read,

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

Pam McLean
Oh, my goodness. I don’t know that I have a favorite that comes to mind, but I am pretty disciplined, and anything that holds me accountable is helpful in the area of tools.

Pete Mockaitis
And what does hold you accountable?

Pam McLean
I have a practice, at the beginning of each week, and I do a sort of an uber practice at the beginning of each month, to really spend time getting focused on what is most important, high level, and kind of medium level, and then in the weeds. And I stay attuned to that as I go through my week to make sure that I accomplish what’s most important.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Pam McLean
My favorite habit these days is I’m a very early riser. Of course, the sun is coming out earlier this time of the year. I love to go for a walk. I live at the kind of peak of a canyon, and so I go up to the very top and get to look out on the Pacific Ocean, and walk all the way down. And that’s just a beautiful habit.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with your audiences?

Pam McLean
I mentioned before this nugget that a colleague, Dorothy Siminovich, gave me years ago, and that is that  I do think that people resonate with that, and that it reminds us that the way we show up in the first few seconds is that is how we’re seen by others. So, that one is one of my favorites.
Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Pam McLean
Our website is www.HudsonInstitute.com. There is, as well, when you go to that website, there is a special resource center for Self as Coach, Self as Leader that has videos and worksheets and all sorts of resources.

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

Pam McLean

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Pam, this has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing this and bringing yourself. It’s just been a lot of fun, a lot of enrichment, and I appreciate the time.

Pam McLean
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Jul 01
0

458: How to End Bad Behavior and Renew Your Team Amidst Change with Steve Ritter

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Steve Ritter says: "The recipe for what makes a team effective is no different than the recipe for what makes a relationship effective."

Steve Ritter shares the fundamentals that makes teams healthy through their inevitable changes.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Where teams get stuck most often
  2. How to grow and deepen over time as a team
  3. Why there’s hope for disengaged team members

About Steve 

Steve Ritter is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Team Excellence. He is on the faculty of the Center for Professional Excellence at Elmhurst College where he earned the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is the acclaimed author of the 2009 Amazon Top 50 Business Book: Team Clock: A Guide to Breakthrough Teams and the 2019 release: The 4 Stages of a Team: How Teams Thrive…and What to do When They Don’t.

Resources Mentioned in this Show:

 

Thank you to our sponsor:

Steve Ritter Interview Transcript

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

Steve Ritter
Pete, I am thrilled to be welcomed back. It has been how many years since we talked the first time on Episode 36, I believe.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that was, well, almost three because you were one of the first as someone I know.

Steve Ritter
Yeah, so a lot has changed and a lot of things haven’t changed since then.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Well, yeah, and we’re going to talk about both of those things. But, first, I want to get updated. So, you do a lot of fun garage band rocking with your crew. What’s the latest there?

Steve Ritter
Well, so technically speaking the music hub is a basement not a garage. And I just realized in thinking about this that we’ve actually performed 1% of the time. This group of guys got together for the first time in 1985, so I think we’re in year 34, and we get together once a month, and we mostly just improvise with pizza and cold beverages.

And, in that time, we’ve had four gigs. So, when we have a gig coming up, we get to work and make sure it’s as tight as possible, but that’s not our natural state of being. Our natural state of being is to improvise and have fun and see where it goes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve been improvising and having fun and seeing where things go – – but committed to it with your work in teams. And so, you just recently released another book “The Four Stages of a Team,” and your previous book “Team Clock” we talked about way back when. So, can you orient us, for those who are not as familiar with the first one, sort of what is your team philosophy, framework, and what’s new?

Steve Ritter
Well, so “The 4 Stages of a Team” was the book that followed the why and the model. So, “Team Clock: A Guide to Breakthrough Teams” is now a 10-year old book, and that followed about 30 years of discovery of a method for what makes teams effective and how teams sustain and thrive through change after change after change.

We’ve been doing the work for about 30 years but had not trademarked the methodology and hadn’t published the book. And so, we had a lot of knowledge but we felt like we had to get the why out there. So, a decade later, and approximately 300 team engagements later, there was a lot of clinical evidence about that it works and why it works and how it works.

And so, to the why and the model of Team Clock came the how of “The 4 Stages of a Team.” The subtitle of the book is “How teams thrive…and what to do when they don’t.” So, in a nutshell, the model was designed after an analog clock where each number around the clock, from 1:00 o’clock back to 12:00, represents a stage of the team’s development.

And the notion of using a clock was because teams operate in cyclical ways, not in straight line trajectories. The inspiration for the model, back around 1980, came in a graduate school class after learning about Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 team model of forming, storming, norming, and performing, which makes a lot of sense at face value when you look at teams who come together, and they form, and then they have some conflict, and they storm, and then they establish some ground rules, also their norms, that enables them to perform. And then, congratulations, now you have a team.

But when I looked at that, I realized that none of the teams in my life and none of the relationships in my life went from beginning to middle and then called it done or over. All the teams that I saw, operated in cycle after cycle after cycle after . And so, the clock became a way of saying, “So, what happens in the early phase?” And then once you establish that, what happens next? And if you establish that, where does it go after that? And when you repeat those cycles over and over, how do they grow and deepen over time?

So, the simplest model was that, in the first stage, which is investment, teams are figuring out their norms, teams are getting aligned on their mission and their values, teams are learning how to disagree and how to manage conflict in a professional and constructive way. And that provides an infrastructure and a platform and a foundation to be able to do things that feel much more like teamwork which is trust, and collaboration, and sharing, and those kinds of .

And so, the second stage is trust phase where teams learn to connect, and teams learn to share or respect, and teams learn to be accountable to themselves and to each other. So, now, when you get to that stage of a team, you’ve created a sufficient platform to be able to be really innovative, and to explore, and to experiment, and to discover, and to be creative, and to take advantage of the differences that you have on the team, and to take some smart risks and move .

And that creates change, and that’s the fourth stage, which is we call distancing because when you’re in a state of change, you kind of have to step back, and re-evaluate, and refuel, and kind of recalibrate, and refocus on whatever your new circumstances are, which takes you back to the investment phase, and to kind of resetting your ground rules, and resetting your values and mission, and making sure that everyone is together on .

And so, that’s kind of where this started and where it went was here’s the model. We believe that all relationships and all teams and all organizations, when they’re healthy, operate in these cycles. And, now, we have 300+ case examples over the last decade to help people who are going through challenges in their teams, see how other teams in all walks of life have handled those same kinds of challenges.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, 300, well done. That’s awesome.

Steve Ritter
Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember it back in my day before the book was written and, yeah, so that’s fun to see it evolve over the trajectory here. Well, so then let’s dig in a little bit into that subtitle “How teams thrive…and what to do when they don’t.” How do teams thrive? Like, what are the fundamental ingredients so that they go in a cycle, okay? So, I imagine there are a couple make or break things that could happen at each phase in this cycle that really matter.

Steve Ritter
Absolutely. So, you think about the investment phase and the team, people are either baking in healthy norms and they’re baking in unhealthy norms. They’re either moving forward with clarity around their values and their mission, and their vision, or they’re moving forward without that clarity, or they’re building in unhealthy conflicts versus healthy conflicts. When you think about the things that teams are trying to establish as a foundation that will be reliable, it’s just that.

It’s, “How do we treat each other from day to day under normal circumstances? How do we treat each other from day to day under stressful circumstances? Are we all moving in the same direction toward the same goal? Have we created space for differences on the teams? So, we may have the same destination but there may be many paths to that destination. And have we made room for the diversity of all those paths?”

And so, the idea in the investment phase is to get clarity around norms, and mission, and values, and vision, and how conflict should be handled. The place that people get stuck there is that that’s hard work. And, usually, that phase comes after a distancing phase or a change phase when people are really emotionally and physically depleted from managing.

And so, it’s difficult to work on infrastructure and build a foundation when you’re really depleted from going through a change. And, oftentimes, that’s been a change of leadership, or a change of direction, and not everyone is in agreement about whether the new leader is a good leader, or whether the new direction is a new direction. And so, that’s the place that people get stuck .

Interestingly, the place that people get stuck in the trust phase is in one of two ways. One is either that it’s working, and people are being accountable to the mission and the values, and people are feeling connected and respected and accountable, and it’s very . And the place that people get stuck is that, “Why would you want to sacrifice comfort to do something innovative where it’s a little more apprehensive or scary?” And so, people like to get into their comfort zone in the trust phase.

The other place that people get stuck is when that’s broken down in some way, and the team doesn’t have psychological safety to be able to take risks, and trust is a problem on the team. It’s really virtually impossible to move forward because what’s supposed to happen next, after trust builds on a team, is for people to explore and innovate and be creative. And when there’s not psychological safety on the team, it’s really hard to take the risk of .

And then the exploration phase, the innovation phase, has reasons that people get stuck as well because you’re out on a limb and you’re trying something new, and the chances that that might fail are part of the discovery process. And not everyone feels comfortable with being out on a limb, and not everyone feels comfortable with taking a risk, and so not everyone feels comfortable with diversity.
And so, in order for innovation and creativity to really thrive on a team, people have to be comfortable being out on a limb and taking risks and having diversity of ideas and of backgrounds on the team. And then, inevitably, that creates . And the obvious reason that people get stuck during the change phase is that most living things prefer stability, and when things are changing it depletes energy, and it’s hard to imagine a better future when you’re in the middle of a lost or a .

And so, kind of like a night’s sleep or the dormant phase of a tree in winter, sometimes we have to step back and refuel before we can step forward and get back into something that’s different than the way it used to .

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I think a lot of the beauty of this model is that it, especially if you’ve been on a particular team for a while, you can sort of see it, like, “Oh, yeah, this happens. There are cycles. There are phases. And you can’t sort of expect it to be all innovation all the time. We’re banging out new ideas 24/7 for years at a time.” So, that’s pretty handy there. So, then I’d love to get your take then, maybe you could start with an example. Let’s talk about a workplace, and how you saw some things transform from unhealthy to healthy.

Steve Ritter
Your introduction to that question makes me think of a different case example that I had considered sharing with you. Most of the case examples that we see involve teams that are struggling and are trying to get moving again. But you joked that teams just can’t be all innovation all the time. But the case example I’m thinking of, actually, that was their goal. Their goal was to be able to be all innovation all the time.

And the challenge they needed to get past was in order to be able to do that, you have to go through the other stages too. You have to manage the fears around innovation. You have to manage the change that you create. You have to lose people. You have to reinvest. You have to rebuild trust. There’d have to be glitches. You have to get through those .

But they, the team that I’m thinking of, and I didn’t end up using them as a case example in the book, is a team that is so attentive to the wellness of their entity as a team that they never let themselves get stuck. They never let conflict become destructive. They never let disrespect take any footing on the team. They never let fear get in the way of trying something new. And they embrace change as a healthy component of their .

And the result of that is that they are probably the most innovative team that I have been aware of in the history of my career. And they know that. They know they’ve become that. And, as a result, they have become a powerful magnet of recruitment internationally. People come from all over the world to be on this team, and they have become an impressive group of people that retains their talent. Nobody wants to leave this team as .

And the reason that they’re a good story is because they didn’t begin this way. I’ve been involved with this particular team for about six years, and when we began it was very similar to many team stories. This was a medical team in an academic center. And it’s not unusual for a couple things to be true on medical teams in academic centers. One is that the politics of universities-based medical centers are rich with academic politics, and they affect the way people…

Pete Mockaitis
Politics are rich. What a weird word choice. Impressively annoying.

Steve Ritter
Exactly. So, oftentimes, you’ll get a leadership change where the natural response is for the faculty to reject the new leader or to fall into factions in some way. And then you get the same dynamics that you get in any group situation. The Gallup organization has been measuring engagement and disengagement for decades. And so, it’s not unusual to have about 20% of your people unhappy anytime there’s been a change. And, oftentimes, people spend all of their energy acting out that unhappiness and then preventing the team from moving .

So, you got a team that’s trying to pursue excellence, and you got a team that’s trying to be more productive and to grow, and you’ve got a team that wants to be more magnetic in their recruitment, and you got a team that wants to research and discover new ways of doing things, but you’ve got 20% toxic, broken, dysfunctional people who are trying to hold everyone back at the same time.

And so, the idea is to be able to somehow get around the corner from the 6 of the 30 people on the team that seem to want to use up all the team’s energy moving forward. And so, ultimately, we end up in a situation with teams like this that I call stay stuck or move forward. There’s usually a moment of truth in teams like this where the vast majority of people in the room want to move forward, but a vocal minority, with power, wants to stay . And you see this in medical centers, you see this in law firms, you see this on professional sports teams, you see this in public schools, you see it everywhere that the powerful vocal minority oftentimes is enough to keep the majority stuck in some .

So, the stay stuck or move forward moment is the team, as a whole, has to decide whether to empower the bullies, or whether to move forward and invite the bullies, or whoever is bringing the dysfunctional behavior onto the team, you know, how to mitigate that. And, usually, it starts with some clarity around mission and values that everyone on the team can  that, “We want the finest clinical excellence. We want the finest patient experience. Or, we want the highest associate satisfaction scores,” or whatever that happens to be.

And if everyone can agree to those values, and everyone can agree to that mission, then it’s a question of whether people can be accountable to that, and whether people can hold themselves and each other accountable to . So, at that point, you’re giving everyone the equivalent of a striped referee shirt, and you’re empowering people from top to bottom of the organization to blow the whistle, or call, or throw a flag whenever there’s a foul. And a foul would be that we didn’t respect somebody else’s opinion, or the foul could be that we don’t view conflict as a productive and powerful change agent, or the change isn’t being managed .

And so, when people are empowered to call a foul, or to throw a flag, or to blow a whistle, and say, “Hey, that’s not what we all agreed on.” And you do that enough times, the culture starts to shift. And, eventually, people who are in that dysfunctional toxic group either leave or they find a way to get in stride with everybody .

And so, usually, at that point, you’re deciding how to kind of reward and invest in the engaged people, you’re deciding how to coach the under-engaged people into engagement, and you’re deciding how to mitigate the disengaged , whether that’s inviting them into the culture on your terms, or whether that’s excusing them from the organization in some kind of a Human Resources 101 Performance Improvement Plan, or whatever it happens to be.

And it’s surprising how the power of a culture that has shifted in that direction will take on its own momentum and that the right things will happen. Either the Performance Improvement Plans will result in the intended outcome, or people will fold into the culture and negative leaders will become positive .

So, team that I’m thinking of that became the most innovative team I’ve ever seen took on that challenge and spent probably almost two years eradicating the dysfunction. They called it a bullyectomy where they surgically removed the people who were hurting the team. As talented as they might’ve been, as condescending and arrogant as they may have been, and for being the smartest person in the room, if they were hurting the team, they didn’t belong on the team .

And so, after about two years of a successful bullyectomy or two, this team got to the business of defining clinical excellence, and using research and discovery to innovate new things, and becoming a magnet for recruitment for the world’s best . And if you think about the old spinning the plate on the stick thing where the plate wobbles, you got to spin it again to keep it moving, they just keep spinning the plate over and over and over again, and they never let anything dysfunctional or anything toxic to the team take root. They know that it’s going to happen every once in a while, because humans are humans, but they address it proactively, even if that means an uncomfortable .

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, some of those norms that you’re talking about establishing there, that everyone had the right to referee, what might those sound like in practice in terms of particular behaviors?

Steve Ritter
How we treat each other, civility, respect, appreciation of differences, embracing change, those kinds of things, Pete. The common sense things that you would have in your marriage, that I would have in my marriage, the way I would treat my children, the way I would treat my best friend, and the way I treat my spouse are the same ground rules that you want in a team or in an organization, they just apply in a larger scale.

And so, it gets down to the way we treat each other, and the way we talk to each other, and the way that we value the diversity on the team, and the way that we manage conflict and adversity in kind of a poised and resilient . It’s basic things you learn in kindergarten kind of values that somehow get a pass in a workplace but wouldn’t get a pass with a best friend or with a lover, right?

So, one of the things that we have learned is that the recipe for what makes a team effective is no different than the recipe for what makes a relationship , whether that’s a co-worker, or whether that’s a lover, or whether that’s a friend, or whether that’s a teammate on a recreational softball team you’re playing on the weekends.

The scale is different when it comes to trust, for instance. Interpersonal team may be more intimate, but the expectation that people treat each other with kindness, and with civility, and with understanding, and with productive conflict resolution, and poise and resilience and flexibility during periods of adversity and change are common sense. And, really, the refereeing is giving people permission to embrace that and to call themselves and each other out.

If in yours and my relationship, which goes back a few years now, if I treated you in a way that was disrespectful, even if I didn’t realize I was being disrespectful, I would hope that you would bring that to my . I’d hope that you would say, “Steve, when you said X, it caused this in me.” And I should have the maturity to say, “Whoa, I had no idea. I did not intend to hurt you, but I see that I did, and I own that, and that’s not going to happen again, and I’m sorry for what I did.” I should be able to do that in any relationship.

One of the exercises that we do with teams is we ask everyone to think about three relationships in their lives, at least one in the workplace, where there’s an unresolved crucial conversation that ought to happen. And the reason it’s unresolved is because it’s uncomfortable, or because you’re afraid it might make it worse, or whatever it happens to be. And then what is the issue? How do you want to address that issue? And what would be the measurement of the outcome of that being in a better ?

Oftentimes, when we see teams move to healthier cultures, that’s what’s happening behind the scenes, is that people who have been not getting along for a long time, figure out why that is and what they need to do about . I had a manager in a medical team last week say, “I don’t understand why she doesn’t like me anymore. We used to be friends.” Now, that’s a very personal exchange, but that caused her to go back to her and say that directly to her, which was my intervention with her, is, “Have you asked her what happened?”

And so, she went back and said, “What happened between us?” And it ended up being something, in the grand scheme of things, that might’ve been petty, “I found out that you made more money than I did, and I’ve never felt the same about you since,” something like that. But, now, it’s being talked . So, if you take the kind of crucial conversations 101 curriculum and methodology, oftentimes that’s what people need to .

And most human resources departments are equipped with people that have the talent to move people through conflict resolution, to move people through crucial conversations, to move people through change management, innovation technique. It’s really just giving the team permission to be well and to act on the common sense things and make relationships .

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess that’s what I’m wondering when it comes to common sense things. I mean, a lot of the things we’re talking about, you know, poise in the midst of conflict, or respecting conflict as a tool to bring about good things. I guess they’re almost a little bit subject to interpretation. I guess. If someone were to sort of throw a flag, and say, “You’re not doing this.” And they can say, “Yes, I am.” It’s almost a little bit, not to be sort of like childish or elementary, but I can see like, I guess, there’s this tension I’m thinking through with regard to, are you really going to spell it out in terms of like explicit rules, like, “We do not say, ‘That’s a stupid idea here’”? Or do you leave it at a higher level of abstraction, like really respectful in our discourse?

Steve Ritter
Sometimes it is childish and immature, and sometimes you’re calling people out for not playing nice in the sandbox. I had a situation where probably the most highly-educated group of people in the room were listening to their assessment results. And so, when you get assessment results that say there is an undercurrent of disrespect in the workplace, for instance, and that that scores a really high mean and a really high standard deviation statistically, which means people feel really strong about it, and there are some people who it affects more dramatically than others.

And you give that piece of data to the room, and then you say, “You, 12 people, responded to this survey in a strong way saying there’s an undercurrent of disrespect on this team. Or, words and actions that undermine the team are tolerated by a leadership. These are survey questions assessing the team’s wellness that give very clear valid metrics around what’s broken with the .” Then you get the conversations about, “What does that mean?”

So, I’ve had a person raised their hand, and say, “I think that’s me. I think I’m the one that people are talking about. And the truth is I don’t handle stress very well and I don’t know what to do about it because when I’m stressed, I don’t treat people very nicely. And I guess people learn to tolerate that with me. And I don’t want to be that way but I don’t know what to do about it.” And then you get four other people that raise their hand, and say, “I’d be happy to help you with that.” And then that person grows in some .

I had a person once in a public school setting where, after about a year of the majority of the faculty trying to wrest control back from the handful of bullies that were bullying the rest of the faculty, raised her hand and said, “I know that everyone thinks I’m one of the bullies, and everyone thinks that I’m one of the disengaged people. The reality is I was and I don’t want to be that person, and I see where we’re going, and I want to move in that direction. I’m just slow to change. So, if you can bear with me, I’m coming.” And everyone embraced that. Everyone embraced the fact that people are allowed to repair . People are willing to accept folks who are on their own journey to be a better teammate in some way.

So, usually, the data from the assessment, whether you do that formally with the online assessment that gives us the rigorous metrics of what’s going on in every aspect of the team, or whether you do it informally with just asking a couple of simple questions, usually leads to a , “So, why are we seeing this data? Tell me what’s going on with the team that makes this data portray this aspect of the team.” And people will tell you a story, and the story will usually lead to, “What do we need to do to fix this?”

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s really beautiful as you described these conversations, they’re just so open, so real, you might say vulnerable. It’s like, “Yeah, this is what’s really going on with me, y’all.” And it’s beautiful. And I think some of listeners might be like, “Wow, we’re miles away from people being able to disclose at that level.”

Steve Ritter
But that’s what happens. So, if the foundation, our norms and values, and that creates a platform upon which to build trust, and there is psychological safety in the , then those are exactly the kinds of conversations that happen where people will ask for coaching, where people will ask for help with .

You work from the assumption that everyone’s doing their best and most of us perform pretty well when there’s no stress. But under stress, some of us regress and some of us get immature, we’re not always at our best all the time. And so, when you’ve gone through the labor of building an environment of accountability and a culture of accountability that strengthens trust, those are exactly the kinds of conversations that  where people will say, “I would like help with this. I’m not being my best self. I’m holding the team back. I want to be a part of this moving forward. What do I need to do to get there?”

Pete Mockaitis
And for the disengaged bullies and folks who are just not having it, you mentioned some coaching and Performance Improvement Plans. How does that process work?

Steve Ritter
Well, you would be surprised at how many people who are in that category find other places to work on their own. For some people, dysfunctional relationships is their currency in life, and when a culture shifts to a healthier more trusting environment, they’re not getting their needs met because their needs are met by making other people feel small, and so they have to go somewhere where they can make that happen.

So, you always have a small number of people who find a way to leave for those reasons. But you’d also be surprised at how many people don’t want to be broken, and they’ve never really had an opportunity. We call them the tippable disengaged, folks who can be tipped into the culture. And so, disengaged people rarely become under-engaged people. They usually buy in, and they say, “I want to use my leadership skills in a different way than being a negative leader. How can I be a part of the solution

And so, I guess when you think of a PIP, when you think of Performance Improvement Plans, they’re generally designed to get somebody out. They give people a tight set of accountabilities and a tight timeframe to perform them which guarantees failure, and then you catch them on the failure, and you have a reason to let them go. That’s usually what a Performance Improvement Plan is designed to do in Human Resources circles.

But a true Performance Improvement Plan gives someone a path to grow and to improve. And if you surround them with the right coaching and the right , you end up with conversations like, “Your peers say that you’ve not been easy to play with in the sandbox. I’m guessing that this isn’t just a problem in the workplace. Perhaps this is a problem in your family, in your social circles as well. You’re 43 years old, do you want to do something about this? Is this okay with you? Because if you want to do something about this, we have resources that can help you.” And you’d be surprised at people’s ability to transform when provided an opportunity to get coached.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And when you said about the drama or the conflicted relationships is their currency in life, it just reminded me of a quote from The Office, Kelly Kapoor said that if she had to choose between two suitors, and she said, “Robbie makes me so happy, and Ryan causes so much drama, so I just need to figure out which of those is more important to me.”

Steve Ritter
Exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, but if you think about that, those of us, and I’m one of them, who thrive on conflict and who thrive on change, I’ve put three kids through college and built two businesses on assisting people with conflict and assisting people with change. And so, there’s a positive way to have that surround you in life. It’s okay to be fueled by chaos as long as you manage it in a professional and a respectful way. It’s okay to have conflict as long as you are mature and adult about the whole .

And so, there are people in life who’s competency is to be good under pressure during periods of significant change and conflict, and those people often become advisors, and consultants, and coaches, and therapists, and teachers, and mentors, and those kinds of professions because they can elevate other people into healthier places, and elevate relationships and teams into healthier places. So, conflict and chaos sometimes gets a bad rap.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so then, I guess I want to talk a little bit about the innovation side of things. So, once you’ve got some of those norms well established, and we’re invested, and there’s the trust is working, and we’re sort of owning our stuff and sharing it, what are some of the best practices for making the most of the innovation phase when you’re in it?

Steve Ritter
Oh, well, I think it’s a willingness to live with an unsolved problem to begin with. Innovation always starts with an unsolved problem. And being willing to experiment, and explore, and create, and fail a couple of times to be able to discover a new way of looking at that problem. And so, all of those dynamics require someone to feel safe and trusted in an environment that supports that kind of thing.

And so, I guess a rich and fertile garden of diversity, full of people who are unafraid to take smart risks and to stumble and fall a couple of times, is usually what creates new ideas. Whereas, the opposite, where people hold onto the status quo and aim for safety usually doesn’t result in new ways of thinking about things or doing .

And so, it all goes back to the foundation of common values and common goals that allow for a culture of , that enables a team to have the psychological safety for people to take risks because innovation is all about providing an atmosphere that, I suppose, has a safety net underneath it so that people can be out on a limb and take risks and try  without having to worry about whether the amygdala portion of the brain screams fear and tells you not to do it, that you go ahead and use your cerebral cortex to analyze and interpret and make decisions and try things even though your fear center is screaming, “Don’t do it.”

And, usually, that happens most effectively when the team has created an atmosphere of collaboration and psychological safety so that falling, or stumbling, or failing are not a big deal. They’re actually fuel for the next round of .

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

Steve Ritter
Well, I think that you’re going to see a barrage of social media hype around the book “The 4 Stages of a Team: How teams thrive…and what to do when they don’t.” I’m excited about this book, but I also want to let your audience know that there’s a 10-year archive of blogs on the TeamClock.com website that are categorized in every area of team effectiveness that you would imagine. And so, while the book is a few hundred pages of best practice and case study and how to, there’s a deep archive of blogs available on the website as well, so I would point people in that direction.

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

Steve Ritter
You know, I think the last time you asked me that, I quoted Seth Godin, and I think I want to quote Seth again. Seth was kind enough to endorse my first book. He talked about the importance of taking responsibility for what it means to join or to lead a team. And his most recent book is titled “This Is Marketing,” and he says in that book, “People don’t want what you make. They want what it will do for them. They want the way it makes them feel.”

And so, that might be more connected, or that might mean peace of mind, or that might be status in some way, and so I think about that quote all the time. I think about that quote when I listen to your podcast, for instance, because your podcast is a great example. I listen for the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel smarter. It makes me feel more equipped. It makes me feel like I have a better toolkit to go out and manage my life. And every episode, without exception, has that outcome when I listen.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Thank you.

Steve Ritter
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I just put out a big survey, and I asked a question along those lines in terms of, “What are your recurring thoughts and feelings when you’re experiencing the show?” And I’m thinking I believe that more and more for marketing, and that’s been part of my…well, this isn’t about Pete’s journey to learn marketing.

Steve Ritter
But we’re thinking the same too that, as Seth says, it’s not about what you make, it’s about what it’ll do for you and the way it makes you feel.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I think that’s true of everything, even when it’s a rational purchase. It’s like, “Oh, this is a wise investment because it will save me money or make me money, so it’s money on top of money. Of course, logically that’s just better to do than to not do.” It’s like, “Yeah, but why bother? Why do you even care what’s money doing for you in the first place?” I was like, “Oh, I feel secure and free and able.”

Steve Ritter
Peace of mind, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, I think Seth really is as brilliant as people say he is.

Steve Ritter
Well, not many people write a daily blog that has the followership that he has.

Pete Mockaitis
And a good daily blog.

Steve Ritter
Yeah, and I’m one that reads it every day. And, you know what, they’re not all a plus and neither are the things that I write, but there’s enough A pluses to keep reading and keep sharing.

Pete Mockaitis
And, let’s see, was I asking about a study or a quote or a book? You’ve got a little bit of everything.

Steve Ritter
You asked about a piece of research. I don’t know if you remember, you and I talked about this Journal of Applied Psychology article that came out maybe over a decade ago.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I do.

Steve Ritter
They studied what it is that most drives the outcome in a professional relationship. And they studied all of the variables and equation from gender to age to educational background to theoretical orientation, and they found that the greatest driver of outcome in a professional relationship was the perception of connection within the first hour from the perspective of the client. And so, if the client felt like there was a good connection in the first hour, the outcome of that professional relationship is going to be much stronger.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And in a way that just makes me feel so much better. I thought about that many, many times as our conversation because it makes me feel better about, I guess, others think I’m like being real judgmental in terms of like I’m reading a book or listening to something, I’m just like, “I just don’t like this guy.”

Steve Ritter
Right. And then when it resonates, you have the opposite feeling, it’s like, “Oh, we are connected, yes.”

Pete Mockaitis
And then I feel so bad, it’s like, “I don’t like this guy. I want to stop reading.” It’s like, “Well, Pete, you should like him. Take in broad perspectives from all sorts of different people that you like and that you dislike.” And then I come back to, “Yeah, but Steve told me that…”

Steve Ritter
In the first hour, in the first 10 pages of this book better grab me.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, so even if I muscled through this book and hated every moment of it, it probably wouldn’t deliver the goods for me just because I’m not resonating from the get-go. Maybe I think they’re scamming or unethical or fraudulent.

Steve Ritter
As an author, Pete, I don’t want you to have to muscle through any page of my book. As our mutual friend, Mawi, told me when we wrote Team Clock, “You never want to give a reader any reason to put a bookmark in the book. You always want the reader to continue to turn pages.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Mawi episode number one.

Steve Ritter
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he’s like the cardinal sin, I think, he said is being boring.

Steve Ritter
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t do that. Oh, inspiring dude. Okay. Well, how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Steve Ritter
Favorite tool. I’m going to give you two. As a writer, I am a devotee of the Flesch-Kincaid Readability statistics in the options menu in Microsoft Word. I don’t know if you use that but it tells you not only how many words you’ve written, but how many sentences per paragraph, how many words per sentence, how many syllables per word, and it tells you at what grade level you are writing at. And I try to keep all of my writing in the eighth to ninth grade level. It just keeps the book flowing and doesn’t give people a reason to put a bookmark in any page. It keeps pages turning.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Steve Ritter
The second tool I would offer is I’ve become an owner of the HeartMath wearable biofeedback tool. And so, the app on your phone is called Inner Balance but it pairs with a Bluetooth connectable device that reads your heart rhythms. And if you want to know how to manage your stress in real time, all you do is clip this thing onto your shirt, and attach it to your earlobe and turn on your phone, and it will tell you in real time whether you’re in a relaxed or stressful state. And you can teach yourself how to put yourself in a relaxed state at any time. And what I find is when I need to perform, whether that’s my band at a wedding, or whether that’s writing a book that I want you to read, I do that at my best when I’m in a relaxed state.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite habit?

Steve Ritter
I put a little creative music into every single day no matter whether that’s five minutes or an hour. It opens new pathways.

Pete Mockaitis
And a particular nugget that you share that really connects and resonates and gets quoted back to you often?

Steve Ritter
I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the concept of renewal. When you think about teams and relationships that’s happening in cycles, you realize that there’s always another chance to refresh something or to repair something. And so, when you think about the things that happen in relationships and teams, anytime you add or subtract a teammate, you have a renewal. Anytime a conflict gets resolved you have a renewal. Anytime an innovation alters the work of the team, you have a renewal. Every time you celebrate a success or a disappointment of a failure, you have a renewal. Every time a goal gets redefined, you have a renewal. And so, you get these chances over and over to elevate your relationships and your .

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

Steve Ritter
TeamClock.com. There’s plenty on the website and it’s in the process of getting refreshed with the new book information, so we hope to make it even more beneficial for our readers.

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

Steve Ritter
I have been asking people to continually assess their relationships and their teams for my entire career, and I want to make that simple. Ask three questions, “In what stage are we right now? Why are we in that stage? And what should we do to move ?”

Pete Mockaitis
Steve, once again, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck with the book “The 4 Stages of a Team,” and all your other adventures.

Steve Ritter
Thank you, Pete. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and I look forward to all the other episodes. You’ve created a tool for all of us, so thank you for that and thanks for inviting me on again.