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Aug 06
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329: Asking Courageous Questions with Dusty Staub

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Dusty Staub says: "When we don't give people honest, direct feedback... we really failed them. Being nice is definitely not nice."

Dusty Staub shares seven acts of courage and how to apply them wisely to your work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three biggest lacks of courage in the workplace
  2. The problem with being nice
  3. Finding and liberating others’ purpose, passion, and power

 

About Dusty

Robert “Dusty” Staub has worked for over 30 years with executives, families, and communities as well as with private and public companies. He has trained and coached executives and teams in creating high performance outcomes. Dusty has been a pioneer in the process of creating systemic accountability by aligning leadership and group behaviors with strategy to produce bottom-line results.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dusty Staub Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dusty, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Dusty Staub
Pete, it’s my pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us first and foremost orientation to this Dusty nickname? Where did it come from and how has it stuck?

Dusty Staub
Well, my father was Robert Earl Staub. He was a – had a full scholarship to Notre Dame playing football in 1942 out of Canton High School. He didn’t go. He went and fought in World War II. His nickname in high school was Blood and Guts Staub. Working as a paratrooper for 26 years in the military, he became even tougher.

When I was born, there was only one Bob Staub and that was him, but I was named Robert Earl Staub II. Staub is a German word that means dust, so when I was one day old, my dad didn’t want me to be called Little Bobby, so he nicknamed me Dusty.

I’ve been known by Dusty, except by the nuns in parochial school who refused because there’s no saint Dusty. When they called me Robert I wouldn’t respond, so I had more than one ruler cracked across my knuckles over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh gracious. I’m wondering, surely there’s a saint somewhere that – of the dusty roads or travels or hospitality for cleaning people’s feet. I don’t know. Somewhere I wonder, but who knows, they may or may not have been receptive to your counteroffer at the time.

Well that’s cool. I’m also curious, did your dad want you to have the family name, but also differentiation in the household is that he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too?

Dusty Staub
Yes, he did. He named me after himself. He didn’t like junior either, so he made it the second because he didn’t like junior. He wanted me to be different than he was and unfortunately, for both of us, I was very different. He and I had – like two rams crashing heads with each other for the first 28 years of my life until I had an awakening and transformed the relationship by changing the way I dealt with him.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. Does this have to do with courage or is this a whole other area of expertise of yours?

Dusty Staub
Well, no, that’s actually where – I was working at the VA hospital. I did a TEDx talk on this called Developing the Cardiovascular System of Your Soul. I was working with a veteran and his family as this veteran was declining. I worked with him for about six weeks. I was at his bedside when he took his last breath. I was providing a psychological consult.

When he died, I realized that if that was my father in that bed, because he was the same age, that I could not have said to that man what the daughter said to her father. I realized that at some point my dad was going to die or I was going to die and we were in a hellish position for each other.

That’s where the acts of courage were born, the courage to look in the mirror and see the way I was acting, the courage to dream of a different way of being, the courage to be confronted by my father, and the courage to confront myself, and the courage to be more vulnerable and open, etcetera.

Seven different acts of courage were required for me to transform myself. In the nine months of work I was free. Then two years later my father changed. He became the dad I always wanted. Somehow in changing myself and my way of relating to him, it changed his way of responding and relating to me. It’s not funny when you think about system dynamics, but it was a revelation to me at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful and powerful and so we’re hearing courage being transformational in personal relationships. I’d also like to hear how this is powerful in the work environment.

Dusty Staub
Well, yeah, because most of my work in the past 35 years has been in corporations, for profit, not for profit, across all segments of US industry. I keep seeing in organizations where a lack of courage at senior leadership levels, as well as down through the ranks, but speaking of senior leaders where it leads to problems.

Two of the biggest lacks of courage occurs most often in corporate America is a lack of the courage to be confronted, number one, so people get antsy, they shut people down.

When somebody comes to give you bad feedback or give you criticism, Pete, in your organization, they’re inviting you to join a conversation that’s been going on for a while. If you shut them down, they just go back underground behind your back and it redoubles and then you get blindsided, which is never good.

Then the second lack of courage is the courage to confront to tell truth to power, to a colleague, to a powerful subordinate, to a superior. People don’t tell their truths. People don’t understand what’s going on because they lack the courage to be confronted and there’s a lot of issues there. Those are the two big ones.

I guess the third one I see is often a lack of the courage to be vulnerable, to be open, to admit I don’t know, to raise my hand and say I need help. Those three acts of courage are really critical if you want to be a good leader and if you want to have a sustainable performance in your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, yeah, that’s clear. That’s big. I love that perspective in terms of it’s the conversations going on underground and then you’re sort of being invited to participate in it is what’s really going on there, which is a beautiful reframe in terms of instead of being defensive, to embrace it.

We had Kim Scott, who wrote the book Radical Candor, on the show earlier talk about how she sort of had an ah-ha moment when she had to fire somebody and he was like, “How come nobody ever told me this?” She’s like, “Oh yeah, we weren’t doing him any favors at all, were we, by trying to be too nice and polite and dancing around the issue at hand that needed to be addressed.”

Dusty Staub
Yeah, what I would say is people get addicted to being nice and being pleasant. They’re not protecting the other person; they’re protecting themselves from the emotional reaction, from feeling like a bad guy or a bad gal. When we don’t give people honest, direct feedback, corrective feedback, as well as encouragement, we really failed them. Being nice is definitely not nice.

I live in the South and down in the South – in New York if someone doesn’t like you, it’s a nice big FU. Down in the South it’s bless your little heart. Add the little into the heart and that’s an FU in the South.

It’s a – I do a lot of work internationally and my German clients tell me, they say, “Americans, you can’t trust them.” They said, “They’re not reliable.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, they say what they think you want to hear and they will say yes when they haven’t really committed and then they don’t follow through.”

I think that’s, again, we want to be pleasant, we want to be liked, we’re saying yes, but we’re not really thinking it through. We’re not saying, “You know? I can’t say yes to that. Here’s why. Let’s talk it through further.” Instead of going deeper or being more honest in our dialogue and conversations, we are polite and nice and we therefore fail the individual, the team, the organization, and it really damages careers. It really damages performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re talking about courage a lot. I’d love it if maybe you could share some of the disguises or packaging or lies or excuses or rationalizations we use when we’re really just frankly, not courageous and that’s really what’s going on. It like we’re really scared, but it gets dressed up or rationalized in some prettier terms that we use to ourselves.

Dusty Staub
One of the biggest rationalizations – but the way, rationalize is a rational lie.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Tweet it.

Dusty Staub
When we rationally lie to ourselves – and there are psychological mechanisms. I talk about this in my second book, The Seven Acts of Courage. I talk about the defensive mechanisms of denial, of projection, of blame, of rationalization.

We rationalize, “I don’t want to hurt Dusty’s feelings.” “I don’t want to rock the boat. Things are okay.” “I can work around this. We can just work around this person. This person has been with me a long time. Yeah, it’s in over their head, but we can carry them.” There’s all kinds of rational lies that people tell themselves. They’ll even say, “You know what? Well, that person’s just mad at me. That’s not really true.”

We do 360 feedback. We gather data from multiple sources, 8, 9, 10, 12 people around an individual. People are shocked sometimes at the themes around the critical things they need to change. It’s because they’ve been hearing it from one or two people, but when they see it as a theme from five or six people all at once, it’s inescapable and then it hurts their feelings.

One of the things, Pete, I believe is that – my father said this to me. I came home from graduate school and my dad had left the military and started his own business. He said, “Son, these damn civilians.” I said, “Dad, what did the damn civilians do now?”

He said, “Son, if they were in the military, we’d shoot them. They don’t tell you the truth. They talk behind your back. When you give them a chance to tell you what’s going on, they won’t tell you. When you try to tell them, they get defensive.” He said, “They let their emotions run them.”

I said, “Well, dad, that’s – you’re calling that amateur. What’s a professional?” He says, “Son, a professional is somebody who does what’s required and necessary, not what’s most comfortable, habitual or routine.”

Pete, what I see in so many of the clients we work with and so much when I read the news is people do what’s habitual, what’s routine. They do the personality. Integrity, doing the right thing when things are easy, is not integrity. Doing the right thing when it’s hard, when it’s painful, that’s integrity.

We talk about a lack of integrity in corporate America, lack of integrity in politics right now, well, until people start showing the courage to be confronted, until people start having the courage to tell the truth without laying down judgments. I mean I can tell the truth to somebody in a way where they thank me or I can tell the truth in a way where the person feels judged, belittled and put down.

When I say the courage to confront, it’s the courage to confront with respect and compassion. When you get angry and you think you’re telling your truth, you’re vomiting on somebody, you’re dumping on somebody. That’s not respectful. That’s not respectful confrontation. That’s not the courage to confront.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got it. Well, so you lay out seven acts of courage progressively, could you walk us through a little bit of sort of each one and how it looks in practice.

Dusty Staub
Sure and interrupt me if I get going too long here. The first act of courage, which I discovered, was the courage to dream and to put forth a dream.

I had a dream that I could have a better relationship with my father, that when I stood at his graveside, there would be no guilt, there would be no shame, there would be no resentment and anger, that I would be at peace with my dad. That was a dream and that was not where we were.

It takes courage to put that dream out there because the world is full of cynics. We have internet trolls. You put a dream out there on the internet, you’re going to have all kinds of people telling you can’t do it, and why you can’t do it, and what’s wrong with you. But there’s never been a statue or a tribute created for a critic. It’s for the creators of the world.

The courage to dream and put the dream out there is the courage to say, “I’d like this.” You might fall flat on your face. I had the dream – I’ve had many dreams and until I put it out there, until I begin to express it and tell other people what I want to create, it doesn’t really become real. I can’t keep it a secret. That’s a big one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so when it comes to the courage to dream, in a way, dreaming seems easy. It’s like, “Hey, you’re just sort of thinking about something.” But what kind of stops that from happening in the first place?

Dusty Staub
Well, there are many people who tell themselves they can’t have it. There’s a wonderful book by Robert Fritz called The Path of Least Resistance. He talks about the creative mindset. In there he lays out stuff that I found to be very true, which is we want something, but we tell ourselves we can’t have it. We listen to that voice and we give up on the dream. The dream is just a pipedream.

But when I say – so I’ll give you an example. When I decided I wanted to change my relationship with my father, I’d always dreamed of a better relationship. I realized that I needed to tell my mom. I needed to tell my friends. I needed to tell my dad I wanted to have a different kind of relationship with him.

I knew my dad was going to laugh at me and be critical. I knew that my mom would be sympathetic. I knew some of my friends were mad at their dads, would think I was just caving in and some of them would be supportive.

But when I put it together and said, “I believe I can create a better relationship. I don’t expect him to change. He won’t change one bit. What I will do is change how I respond and what I do. I’m going to stop being critical. I’m going to stop finding fault. I’m going to stop complaining about him. I’m going to stop yelling at him when he yells at me. I’m going to start working on showing some appreciation for what he’s been through.”

He went through two wars, World War II, Korea. He grew up in the Depression, etcetera, etcetera. By beginning to express that dream and put it out there and make it concrete, until you make it more concrete and you give some scope to it, and you begin to express it, it’s just a pipedream. But that’s – and it takes courage to do that because there’s a big part of us that says, we can never do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. Then the second act is to – the courage to see current reality. How does that play out?

Dusty Staub
Yeah, and the reason I have that as the second act is you first need to know where you want to go and start to claim it. Then the second is you have to have the courage to see what’s working for you and working against you.

Again, using my dad and I as an example, just sticking with that image, I had to look in the mirror and see the nasty way I had of reacting to him. I totally justified my behavior based on his behavior.

There’s no justification for bad behavior. I don’t care. The other person can engage in egregious behavior, my behavior is not tied to that. Otherwise I say that I’m just a reactive machine. They push this button, I react. They push that button, I react.  … my father was going to do what he was going to do and I could choose how I was going to respond.

Seeing the current reality is claiming my strengths, claiming my weaknesses, what’s working for me, what’s working against me. Not having a pipedream, somehow my dad is going to be different, but seeing the way it is and seeing how I’m interacting and what’s problematic in the way I interact and seeing that current reality and claiming it.

Some people, Pete, will not claim their strengths because then they’d have to do something with them. Some people lack the courage to claim their weaknesses. They gloss over them because then they would have to own up that there’s something they’re responsible for and they have to do different.

The courage to see current reality is sometimes the courage to see our strengths, but for some people it’s the courage to admit and see weaknesses or gaps.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. Next up, the courage to confront. How does that go?

Dusty Staub
I’ll put it this way. Imagine you have the courage to dream. That’s your guiding star. That’s what you’re going after. The courage to create reality is the ground you stand on. If you don’t know the ground you stand on, you’re not going to be able to move. But to go from current reality to the dream, requires five different acts of courage.

The first act is the courage to confront, the courage to speak your truth, to tell other people what you see, to tell other people what you like and don’t like. It’s finding your voice and finding the power to express your voice without being judgmental or critical or negative. Just saying, “Hey, this is what I see. This is the reality I have. What do you see?” We engage in a dialogue rather than a one-way conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Then likewise, there’s the courage to be confronted by the other.

Dusty Staub
Yeah. That’s the fourth act of courage is the courage to be confronted. Some people will dish it out. There are people who have the courage to confront.

Right now I think of our president of the United States. He will put it out there. He doesn’t do it nicely, but he puts it out there. But he lacks the courage to be confronted. If you’re not willing to hear confrontation or differences of opinion, it means you’re going to create extra resistance, you’re going to create more negativity, and you’re going to guarantee you’re going to get blindsided because people will just go underground with it if you have a lot of power or they lack the courage to continue to tell their truth.

The courage to be confronted means I don’t want to be blindsided. It’s like going – crossing the street, a big highway, busy highway, a thoroughfare in New York City, by putting blinders on that are about three feet out. You’re going to get hurt, maybe killed. You want to take the blinders off.

You want to have the courage to be confronted. You want to have the courage to let people tell you things, maybe not always in the nicest way, but from that at least you have more perspective and more information with which to work.

Pete Mockaitis
In this kind of conversational dynamic, you talked about not unloading with anger and what are some other sort of pro tips for engaging in a way that is positive and constructive when you’re going to the difficult territory?

Dusty Staub
Yeah, one of the major tools – we teach two major tools of the ten we teach. One is what we call power questions. Power questions are questions that are Pareto based, the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of the information gives you eighty percent of the value.

They’re also designed to go for root cause. To be most effective in your work, to add value, to grow in your position, to grow in your power as a leader, you want to be able to do root cause analysis and you want to ask value-added questions that are powerful.

For example, you’d say this is an example of “Do you like working here?” Terrible question. Yes or no? “What do you like about working here?” Better question, but still not very valuable. A power question, “What’s the one thing you like most about working here?”

If I’m an employee I go to my boss and I say, “Hey boss, what’s the one thing I’m doing you most appreciate, want to make sure I keep on doing? Now what’s the one thing I could change that would make the biggest positive difference in my performance in this team?” Then a bonus power question, “Boss, what’s the one thing I can do to either take something off your plate or to help you and this team be more successful?”

By asking those three powerful questions, you gather information from your supervisor, from your peers, from your … – if you’re really brave, go home and ask your spouse, “Hey sweetheart, what’s the one thing I’m doing you most appreciate in our marriage that you want me to make sure I keep on doing? What’s the one thing I could change that would make the biggest difference? What could I do to help you feel more loved and supported in this relationship?”

Then ask follow up questions to uncover and go for a root cause. You hit a root cause, you take care of a dozen symptoms. Poor employee morale, dropping profits, angry customers, poor quality, lack of performance, slow decision making, those are symptoms, they’re not root cause. Poor teamwork, those are symptoms. What’s the root cause? Being able to ask powerful questions.

Then the second tool that goes with that is highly interactive listening, where you follow up on what you’ve heard. You ask follow-up questions. You reflect to show that the person – that you’ve heard them. You check to make sure you really heard them well.

There’s a wonderful quote. I can’t remember who it’s from but I love it. It’s like, “The biggest problem with communication is the perception that it has occurred,” because we all hear what we want to hear.

That courage to be confronted is the courage to listen very carefully, interactively and ask powerful questions. Those two skills alone can transform your perception of you in the workplace because many people are not open to feedback, especially corrective feedback. Many people don’t ask for it.

When you show that you’re willing to ask for the good as well as the not so good, you’re willing to ask for how you can step up and be better and you show that you’re listening and you get into an interactive conversation, your value added, the perception of you as a value added employee, as a value added leader, just really goes up tremendously.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you talked about the power questions that sort of really hit the 80/20 goodness and surface it, then what do some of those follow ups sound like to get to root cause?

Dusty Staub
Yeah. Let’s say I say to you, “Pete, what’s the one thing I could do to make the biggest positive difference in our working relationship?”

You say, “Well, Dusty, if you would start being more proactive. Instead of waiting for me to give you an assignment, look and see what you think needs to happen with our key customers and come to me with some ideas. Don’t wait for me to tell you.”

I’d say, “Okay. Can you give me an example of a time you saw me waiting to be told when you think I could have been proactive?”

You go, “Yeah, two weeks ago with Mr. Jones. When he called in and there was an issue. You’d gotten an email three weeks before that, but I got on the call and I talked to him and as I talked to him I realized there were some things we could do to solve it. When I came to you to ask about it, you had several good ideas. Why didn’t you get on the phone and call him three weeks before after that email to have the conversation with him and come up with the ideas.”

I go, “Oh yeah, okay. That’s great. What would be a question that I could ask of him if I get another email or I see emails like that, what would be some of the questions that you’d want to see me ask? If I could ask only two questions, what would be the best questions from your perspective, from a strategic perspective, Pete?”

“The one question I want you to ask is ‘What’s the one thing we’re doing that makes us most value added to you and what’s the one thing we could add or do different that would make us even more value added, dear customer?’” “Those are great questions. Yeah.”

“I’d like you to start asking those of all of our key customers. I’d like you to start asking that of your teammates. I’d like you to start recording that and about once every four or five weeks, Dusty, I’d really like it if you come in and you give me a down-low on what you’re hearing and what the themes are. That’s where you start being more strategic and proactive.” I go, “Oh, that’s great, Pete. Thank you.”

Right there, you did some coaching and guidance, but I initiated it by asking the follow up questions and being willing to listen and ask for more guidance.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well next up you’ve got the courage to learn and grow. How does this go?

Dusty Staub
Well, that’s a big one. Chris Argyris, a Yale University psychologist, wrote a little book, which talked why is that really smart, successful people start to fail. It’s because they become blinded by their past success. They become – they begin to suffer from something my old boss, Dr. James Noble Farr, called hardening of the categories. The categories get harder as they experience success and they get blinded by that success and they stop learning and growing.

The courage to learn and grow is the willingness to step into ambiguity and the unknown. Most people don’t like ambiguity. They don’t like uncertainty. Yet, when you start something new, when you’re really going down into new territory, it’s going to be uncertain, it’s going to be ambiguous. There’s going to be a lot of fog. You have to be willing to navigate through the fog. That’s one part.

The second piece is – and this is true for a lot of very successful people who start to limit themselves – is you have to give up the addiction to being right. There are two pieces to the courage to learn and grow. The one is to step into ambiguity, the unknown, move through the fear. The second is to give up any addiction or need to be right.

I would rather win. I’d rather find a better way than insist on being right because being right means I’m locked into a cognitive trap. I’m trapped in my old ways and patterns of thinking. It’s what my dad would call being an amateur leader as opposed to a real pro.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Then next up we’ve got the courage to be vulnerable.

Dusty Staub
Yup. And I actually add the words to love. I got the courage to put that in there my – the publisher of the book, the hardback cover of Seven Acts of Courage, was Executive Excellence. My publisher wanted me to take out the courage to be vulnerable. He said, “Executives won’t want that. That’s not good.” But I insisted.

In 1998 the hardcover of Seven Acts came out and … I had the courage to be vulnerable to love. It’s turned out to be one of the most powerful concepts.

In fact Brene Brown did a TED talk that’s gone viral and has millions of views now. She’s talking about vulnerability and the power of vulnerability. Well, I’ve been talking about it since 1998.

For me, the courage to be vulnerable is the willingness to be open. I actually got that term from Max Depree. He wrote a little book called Leadership is An Art. He was the chairman and CEO of the Herman Miller Corporation for 20 years. There were 456th in total sales in the Fortune 500, but number 12 in total return to investors.

In his book he said, “First and foremost the leader must be willing to be vulnerable to the strengths, talents and wild ideas of the people around him.” I was so inspired by that and I realized that that’s exactly what I had to do with my dad to transform myself.

It’s one of the few things that we Americans are really taught. We’re taught to be tough and strong and independent and being vulnerable is weak. Well, being vulnerable takes real strength. It means being open, to raise my hand and say, “I don’t know,” to ask for help, to be willing to be open to new ideas and inputs.

In fact, there can be no real innovation and true passion and creativity until there is the courage to be vulnerable in the corporate ranks and the C-suites, and in the teams and organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, all right. When you say to love, what does that really mean in that context?

Dusty Staub
In a business context it means the courage to really care, the courage to really care.

I worked for a boss who was very opinionated, very stubborn. He was the first founder of the Center for Creative Leadership, Dr. James Noble Farr. He was the head of graduate studies at Columbia University. Brilliant man. A pioneer in leadership thinking.

He was always right, meant all of us were always wrong. Had – being vulnerable and open to him was to admit that I really cared about him. I didn’t like him sometimes, but I really did care about him. I cared very much about our customers. I would call that love, but in business I think it’s showing that you care, that you respect, that you really value other people.

The funny thing is, Pete, I find that – I was … in family therapist many, many years ago. In private practice I found that many, many, men and more than a few women have a fear of being vulnerable, of being hurt and so they block the love. They create the very thing they fear most, which is feeling lonely, isolated and ultimately leaving or being left.

The courage to be vulnerable, to love is vitally important in a relationship. It’s vitally important in business. It’s around that respect, that caring, that sense of letting people know “I need you. I can’t get it done without you.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious to hear, how did that story evolve with you – what was his name, the founder of the Center for Creative Leadership?

Dusty Staub
That was James Noble Farr, Dr. Farr. Well, after being there for two years, he made me Director of Leadership Development. I worked as Director of Leadership Development for three years, created all kinds of programs, and finally I realized I wanted to go off and create my own business.

I want to Jim and I said, “Jim, you and I struggle all the time. Every time a client wants something new and I’m creating something new, you and I fight and argue. I’m actually tired. I think I can go out and do my own thing. I want to give you plenty of notice to leave.”

He appreciated that. I was also the top biller and the top creator of product at the time. He said, “All right, give me two months.” I said, “All right.” Then a week later he came and said, “No, no, go ahead and go, go ahead and go,” because he was afraid other people might want to leave with me I guess.

But I had a three year non-compete, so I couldn’t work with any of the clients, but fortunately AT&T picked us up and a few other clients came in very quickly. It was a real risk. It was really scary, but I tripled my income within the first 15 months and was able to create things the way our clients were asking us rather than trying to always filter it through the thinking of a 70-year-old guy who had things his way.

But Jim and I – I brought him out here to the farm. We did a Christmas party and we gave him a plaque and thanked him because he helped launch this business. I couldn’t be where I am or couldn’t have had all the success without him and his teaching.

He said something really nice to me. He said, “You know Dusty?” He said, “Of all the consultants I’ve worked with over the years, you’ve done more and taken my work further than anybody else and I really appreciate that.” He and I were planning to do some things and then he died from heat stroke at the age of – he was in his early 80s.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh man.

Dusty Staub
But it was always that sense of respect and caring even when I needed to leave to start my own business. You can do things like that if you treat others with respect and dignity and you have that willingness to be vulnerable and open.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s huge. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
The final piece there is the courage to act. What’s behind this?

Dusty Staub
The courage to act is where it all comes together. It’s the seventh act for a reason.

One of the things that I think that you do in this podcast is you help people to really be awesome in their jobs, to really step up and play their game at a higher level.

For me, wisdom and acting, there are people who have the courage to act, but they do it without really thinking. They don’t do good critical thinking. They’re not strategic, so they’re very tactical. There’s lots of activities and they’re acting on lots of activities, but not their highest and best use.

The courage to act without the dream, seeing current reality, confronting and being confronted, learning and growing, and being vulnerable is not going to have as much wisdom or guidance to it. If I act informed by those prior six acts of courage, then I can act with greater wisdom and greater strategic guidance. I might be doing less, but I’m having a far greater impact.

There is a book out now called Essentialism.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we had Greg on the show.

Dusty Staub
Yeah. I love Essentialism. Greg’s brilliant. I love it because he – I like him and Daniel Pink, Drive because – and Brene Brown and Simon Sinek because these guys are all talking about stuff I’ve been doing since 1998 in business. They just keep validating me, which is wonderful.

What I love about that is I was asking ‘what’s my highest and best use.’ Looking at all of the things on your plate, all of the things you can say yes to, all of the things you’re being asked to do, the vast majority of them offer minimal value. There’s some that offer tremendous value.

Being able to act informed by those prior six acts of courage, allows you to act in more of an essentialist way saying, “What’s my highest and best use? What’s tied to my dream, tied to my strengths, tied to what I’m willing to address, tied to the information I’m getting from listening to other people carefully and to criticism, to be being vulnerable and open, to learning and growing and stepping into the unknown? What are the things I can do?”

Then reorder your priorities. Reorder your goals and let some of the goals go.” What is it I should stop doing?” is a great question. “What is it I need to start saying no to?” because every no is a strategic yes to something else and every yes is a strategic no to something important like time with my spouse, time with my kids, time to recharge my batteries, time to write my book that I’ve been talking about for 15 years, etcetera, etcetera.

Greg’s concept and his way of looking at things I think is a great gift. It’s a key question. How can I be more strategic and offer greater value. Instead of being hypnotized by activity and being a good guy and always saying yes, I need to be able to say no politely, respectfully because I’m saying yes to something more important.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have any thoughts when it comes to – this courage stuff, it’s inspiring. It gets you going, like, “Yeah, bring it on.” At least that’s how I feel, so thank you. It’s fun. Do you have any tips for bringing in wisdom and prudence to ensure that you are applying this well and not in a way that could be overzealous or problematic.

Dusty Staub
Oh yeah. That’s a great question, by the way. It’s possible somebody could take one or more of the acts of courage and go rushing off thinking, “Oh, this is great,” but they haven’t really thought through the implications. Again, it’s like pick your battle.

The courage to confront means being able to tell your truth, but it doesn’t mean you tell your truth all the time to all people in every situation. You need to say, “All right, is this the right situation?”

An employee who confronts the senior leader in a town hall in front of other people is never going to get a good response. Even if the guy or gal is a great leader, they’re going to feel some defensiveness. The better confrontation or conversation is a one-on-one and done politely and respectfully. Yet some people don’t get the courage up until they can attack somebody in a public setting.

I think being prudently aware of timing, of what am I trying to accomplish. Because you can win a battle, but lose the war. I want to think long-term, what do I want to create, how I want to be seen as value added, what are the ways I need to begin to offer my truth.

And let me stage it because I might not be able to tell all my truth all at once, but what’s the first phase, what’s the next phase, how do I see if people are willing to really hear me, how can I position this. Then also in listening.

People might have three or four things they’re critical of. I might – I’d say, “Pete, of these three or four things that you’re talking about, what’s the one thing – if I could only do one of these – what would make the biggest positive difference?” You’d say, “Well, this one,” because you know. Then I know what I need to work on.

Then I can ask follow-up questions about that one and why it matters and what difference it would make, how we would know, how you would know, how I would know that was actually making a difference. That then unpacks it. That’s that interactive listening with power questions built in.

That means I’m being prudent, I’m doing it with wisdom and information. Because to act without information, to act without guidance, to act without a plan, to act without asking for input and insight and corrective feedback is usually a recipe for disaster.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

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

Dusty Staub
Gosh, I would just say this that I love the idea of helping people be really terrific in their work place, being awesome at their jobs, which really drew me to you, Pete.

What I would say is that I think the essence of it is how do we help liberate the purpose, the passion, and the power of those around us. If I can help people focus on their fundamental why, going to Simon Sinek’s talk, we can focus on the purpose here, the why. If we then then look at how the why informs what we do and how we do it, we’re going to be much more effective.

Now, we focus on purpose. What is it that really turns you on? What is it that really is going to excite you? What’s really going to make a difference? Where are you most passionate? Now, together, focus in a purposeful way on our why or what in doing that which gives us a greatest lift, we’re going to really liberate our power collectively.

There’s a term that I coined a number of years ago. I call it the effective intelligence of an organization. One of the things we focus on is multiplying the effective intelligence of an organization by getting people to focus on these fundamentals and then giving them tools to help them move forward in a more powerful way.

I would say wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, if you can focus on the purpose, if you can then find where the passion lies and how to begin to liberate that – my dad had a great quote, he said, “Son, any damn fool can tell you you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The trick is to get the horse thirsty, then you can’t stop it from drinking.”

What makes someone thirsty? Do you know? What kind of questions do you need to ask to figure that out? Then how can we work together in the most powerful way? Liberating purpose, passion, and power I think is a key.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

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

Dusty Staub
Oh, my favorite quote right now is one by Einstein, Albert Einstein. It goes like this, he says, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe everything is a miracle and those who believe nothing is.”

I’m the kind of person, Pete, who believes everything is a miracle: the fact that we exist, that we’re alive, the fact that we can see and we can hear, the fact that I can have this conversation with you in this mysterious technology, my children, the love of my life, my family, beautiful trees here in the forest around me. Everything is a miracle.

I think that when we believe everything is a miracle, we’re open to possibility, we’re open to finding our best self. We’re able to find more and more and continue to grow and discover. If I believe nothing is a miracle, it’s all transactional. It’s all just a series of transactions. You live, you work, you die. I think it’s – the real issue is how deeply have you loved, how fully have you lived, how completely have you been your best self?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you.

Dusty Staub
Oh, you’re welcome.

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

Dusty Staub
Oh gosh, well, Google just released its research on teams. Google hired really smart, bright people. They put these teams together. They had some teams that were outperforming other teams consistently and they were trying to figure out what the difference was. They looked at over 200 factors.

Finally, – this is on the Google site. It’s been listed in several other sites too. Apple News had it. But basically they discovered that when they started looking at the research there were five factors that make for great teams, but the number one factor that outweighed everything else was a sense of psychological safety.

If you think about it in Good to Great they’re talking about the organizations that went from good to great engaged in vigorous intellectual debate that was not personalized, where you have the type five leader, who’s not egotistical, but really looks out at the world in terms of what he or she can contribute to the world and how he or she can engage others as opposed to how everything can make him or her look better.

Vigorous intellectual debate requires a sense of psychological safety. If I feel that I’m going to be ridiculed, made fun of, punished for offering a crazy idea or offering a criticism or putting an idea out there or putting something half-baked or exploring something I’m not so sure of, I’m not going to do it.

You have people holding back, not sharing ideas, people not engaging in vigorous intellectual debate, so you don’t come up what the best answers. You don’t come up – that sense of psychological safety and then structure, and then a sense of effectiveness and feeling valued, those all come in, but the number one factor is psychological safety. I really love that study.

Years ago Becky Langford, who worked at AT&T in PR, told me, she said, “Dusty, you should let everybody know that you create a sense of safe space for people.” I said, “Eh, it’s too touchy feely. It’s going to scare people.” This was back in 1990 but actually I think if I’d done that, the business would probably be ten times bigger because that’s really the key.

When we walk in to do a training, when we walk in to do consulting or coaching, if we can’t create psychological safety, we’re wasting our time. If you don’t have psychological safety on your team, in your organization, you’re never going to be great. You might be good, but you’ll never be great.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Dusty Staub
Oh, well, I love – I would say Daniel Pink’s Drive. Daniel Pink really when I was reading his book, I had tears in my eyes because he was talking about all the research. He did – looking at the last 30 years of research.

He said, “Look, most managers and leaders in corporations are still using understanding of the 1940s and 1950s. They haven’t caught up to modern research. They’re still using extrinsic motivators, the carrot and the stick. Do this, you get this reward. Don’t do this, you get punished.” That only works if you’re making widgets. But when you need complex intellectual task and innovation, you need to have intrinsic motivators.

He identified the three big intrinsic motivators in the first half of the book. The second half is how to actually use them, which is a sense of purpose, being part of something greater which I get to contribute to, that’s intrinsically motivating; a sense of autonomy, some say so in my work week, in my work month, my work years, so I have some say so and some … in there; and a sense of personal mastery that working here I get to grow and develop.

I love that. It just gave more intellectual fire power to the work we do. It also just made sense in terms of what I felt and known since 1990 in writing my own books and my own material.

Then the other book I really like is The Heart’s Code by Dr. Paul Pearsall. Pearsall is a psychologist who works with heart transplant surgeons and cardiologists.

He said that in all of his research, in all of his work, what he’s come to realize that the heart actually carries memories. In heart transplant cases, people’s personalities change. Some of the characteristics of the heart giver, the donor, shows up in the recipient. He tells about five or six amazing stories in the book.

I was in tears throughout that book because I’ve always said look, the essence of being a great leader is that it comes from the tone and quality of your heart. He just really brought that to bear when he talked about that from his own experience and from his own work as a – working with physicians in heart transplants, heart transplant recipients.

Those are two books I really recommend: The Heart’s Code, Dr. Paul Pearsall and Drive by Daniel Pink.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite habit?

Dusty Staub
Oh, put first things first. Steven Covey’s 7 Habits. I love put first things first. Know what matters most and make sure you do that first, make sure you put that first. What I see so many people do is we will put first things last. We let the trivial few overwhelm us – the trivial many overwhelm us and the important few get lost.

That goes back to Greg’s book on essentialism. Let’s focus on what really matters most, put first things first. Let’s focus on the essentials.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get quoted back to you frequently?

Dusty Staub
Yeah. When I was a young psychotherapist I came to a realization after about three years of private practice that have really carried over into the consulting work in our organization. It’s simply this, no one can do it for you and you can’t do it alone.

No one can do it for you. You’ve got to have the courage to step up and have the dream. See the current reality and confront or be confronted. Learn and grown and be vulnerable and open and to then take action.

No one can do that for you and you can’t do it by yourself. You can’t go off in a cave and make everything right. It’s through interaction. It’s through learning. It’s through listening. It’s through help. It’s through conflict and confrontation, through criticism, through appreciation, through recognition. It’s the interactive nature of us human beings with each other at our best and knowing that the intent is to help us be our best. That really helps.

I would say this, Pete, no one can do it for you and you can’t do it by yourself.

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

Dusty Staub
We actually have two websites. The business-to-business website for corporations and senior leaders and so forth is StaubLeadership.com, www.Staub – S-T-A-U-BLeadership.com. That links to a YouTube channel. There are like 30 YouTube videos of me. There is a – there’s a list of the books and materials, and also the team that works with me is listed all there.

The new website we started last year is for the general public. It’s for teachers, students. It’s for everybody. It’s called www.TheActsOfCourage.com. TheActsOfCourage.com. There are short videos explaining each act of courage with a story about each act. There are interviews with executives and psychologists and business leaders, and entrepreneurs. There are many articles on there. I’ve written articles, interviews I’ve had with people.

I’d recommend people take a look at both of those websites. Then of course I have a TED talk, a TEDx talk, Developing Cardiovascular System of the Soul, which there’s – also people can pick up.

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

Dusty Staub
Yeah. I would say the final challenge I would say is do you have the courage to be your best self, to claim your deepest dream and to face the thing you least want to face because it’s the act of courage that you’ve least developed that will be your Achilles heel, that will keep you limping through life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Dusty, thank you so much for going deep into this good stuff. It’s been inspiring and a lot of fun. I just wish you all the best in all you’re up to.

Dusty Staub
Thank you Pete and thank you for the great work you’re doing. If I can ever be of any help as you work on helping people be awesome at work, just let me know.

Pete Mockaitis
Thanks a lot.

Dusty Staub
It was a great interview. Thank you.

Aug 03
0

328: Inspiring Actions and Movements with Jennifer Dulski

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Jennifer Dulski says: "See your failures as something that... you can shout from the rooftop so that other people may learn from them too."

Jennifer Dulski breaks down how to rally communities around a common cause—and keep them going even without you.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three ingredients of a successful movement
  2. The keys to mobilizing people
  3. How to leverage criticism

About Jennifer

Jennifer Dulski is the head of Groups and Community at Facebook. Prior to Facebook, Jennifer served as president and COO of Change.org, a social enterprise company that empowers people everywhere to start and win campaigns for change. She was an early Yahoo! employee, rising through the ranks over her nine-year tenure to ultimately lead one of the company’s six business units as group VP and general manager of Local and Marketplaces. Jennifer left Yahoo! to become CEO of The Dealmap, a site acquired by Google in 2011, making her the first woman to sell a company to Google. Jennifer has a deep passion for making the world a better place and is a prominent thought leader in Silicon Valley.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Jennifer Dulski Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us here on How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Jennifer Dulski
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you currently serve as the Head of Groups and Community at Facebook. And I have to imagine you’ve encountered some interesting groups, in terms of names and the communities and people who are coming together. Could you enlighten us, inspire us? What are some of the most noteworthy, surprising or funny Facebook groups you’ve bumped into?

Jennifer Dulski
Sure. So one of my favorite things about Facebook groups is that there really is a group for everyone and everything you can imagine. And many of the groups are about those things that are kind of closest and most important to us in our lives – parenting and health and work. And then there’s also a group for everything that makes you feel like you might be different or unusual, and many of the times people come together around things like school orchestra teachers, is one of my favorites, or there’s one called “Mama Dragons”, just for moms of LGBTQ kids who are talking about how to help raise their kids in a competent, supportive way.
And then there are fun, interesting hobbies, like there are groups for beekeepers. There are groups for people who are on a health kick. One of my favorites there is a group called “The Missing Chins”, which is a group of men who run together and they’ve lost jointly many thousand pounds, so they have collectively removed many of their chins, as they say. And then another favorite of mine is called “The Very Old Skateboarders”, which is a group of women in their 60s and 70s who love to go skateboarding together. And they say things like, “When we’re alone, we feel different and maybe a little bit odd, but when we’re together we’re birds of a feather all in the same community.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And how many very old skateboarders are there, per chance?

Jennifer Dulski
I don’t know the exact number, but there are many dozens of the very old skateboarders. Some of these groups are very large. There is a group that I was looking at the other day called “Planners Gone Wild”, which is for people who love to plan. They share their binders and their spiral notebooks, and so forth. That group has 50,000 people in it, so they really do range in size.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. So, I want to dig into your book Purposeful, and talk about some of those proactive pieces to be purposeful and inspire change and that kind of thing with a movement. But first, I’m sort of curious – in your role as the Head of Groups and Community at Facebook – what are the big things that you’re thinking through and working on day in and day out?

Jennifer Dulski
So, we’re trying to make sure that we can help everyone in the world find a community that is meaningful to them and adds value to their lives. And we announced a couple of months ago that we now have 200 million people who are in these very meaningful groups, and we see that being able to join a group like this actually helps people get a sense of belonging, feel connected, and it adds the ability to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. And so we’re working on growing that, helping everybody find the most relevant group for themselves.
And one of the challenges we think about is how do you help build empathy between people? We live in a world that’s very divided – increasingly so – and what we see happening in Facebook groups is that people come together over something they have in common. Maybe they love the same kind of dog, maybe they live in the same neighborhood, but they don’t necessarily always have the same political views, or have the same demographics. And we find that people can build really trusting relationships in these communities that’s helping bring our world closer together again.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, because you have a certain affinity, like, “If this guy loves Yorkies, he can’t be all that bad.”

Jennifer Dulski
Right, it’s true. One of my personal favorite groups is called “Grown and Flown Parents”. It’s for people who have kids that are either teenagers or off to college. And this group is filled with hundreds of thousands of parents, all over the world in this case, and we all have something in common. We’re all talking about what do you put in your kid’s dorm room, or how do you pay for college tuition, or what did your kids wear to the prom? And yet, we have a lot of things that we might not see eye-to-eye on and it’s a lot easier to have those conversations once you build up that trust.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, especially in a polarized, divided world. It’s like, “Okay, we both love Yorkies. We’ve hung out a few times. You seem intelligent and interesting, and sort of have a decent head on your shoulders.” So maybe I can say, “Why is it that you love Donald Trump? I don’t know anybody who does.” And then you can sort of go there and say, “Okay”, and then hear a lot of this sound bite animosity that’s out there.

Jennifer Dulski
It’s so true. We actually see some groups doing this directly. So there’s a group called “Make America Dinner Again”, which is doing exactly that – kind of hosting dinners with people who are willing to have these conversations. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they change their mind, but they build understanding of a different perspective. By the way, I looked it up, and “The Very Old Skateboarders” – I hugely underestimated it. Apparently there are nearly 3,000 very old skateboarders.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And we might have a couple listening to the show that are like, “Oh finally, a place I can go.” [laugh] So, share with us a little bit – your book Purposeful – what’s the big idea behind it?

Jennifer Dulski
So the big idea behind Purposeful is that we can all be movement starters. And I have been very fortunate in my career to be able to support and empower regular people who ignite extraordinary change in the world. I did this at Change.org, I now do it at Facebook, helping people who run communities. And what I’ve seen is that all kinds of people can do this. It’s teenagers, it’s grandparents, it’s stay-at-home moms, it’s veterans – anyone you can imagine has the power to start a movement, and that means all of us do.
And in Purposeful, I share the lessons that I have learned from working with and interviewing movement starters from all walks of life. There’s a young woman with Down syndrome who persuaded Congress to pass a new law for Americans with disabilities, there are two teenagers who helped redo the curriculum in the state where they live to add the concept of consent, there’s an entrepreneur who’s reinventing the way we think about personal nutrition. It’s basically activists and business people, all creating change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the word “movement” has some power behind it, which is bigger than just “Hey, help me with this thing I’m doing.” So what makes a movement a movement, and how could you turn a goal into a movement?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so a movement is anything that rallies people around a common purpose. The idea is that most movements are started by one individual or a small group of people, but they really aren’t a movement until they rally other people together around that cause. And the first step in starting any movement is to create a vision. And the people that I’ve seen are most successful at this, they have visions that have three parts. So the first part is a desired future for the world.
So the most successful visions all have three parts to them. The first part is a desired future for the world. What is it that you want the world to look like? And it may be your workplace or your neighborhood – so for instance, maybe you’re trying to get parental leave offered at your company. Your desired future would be, “I envision a world in which everyone at my organization is offered paid parental leave.”
The second part is a purpose, which is why that desired future matters to you personally. So you might say, “This matters to me because I want to make sure all new parents are able to have the time required to successfully raise their children and take care of them in these early first few months.”
And then the third part of a successful vision is a story that brings the vision to life. And so, here you might use a personal story or one from someone that you know that really resonates with this issue. So for instance, there’s a woman named Katie Bethell, who’s working on the issue of paid parental leave, and she brings up the stories of two women – one who’s a Republican, one who’s a Democrat. They each had newborn babies who died in accidents in their daycare, because the moms were not in jobs that gave them parental leave, and they had to put tiny infants into daycare, which led to horrible accidents. And so, that story brings a vision to life and makes even more people realize why the vision of paid parental leave is important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Yeah, that’s powerful. Okay, so if those are the ingredients – establishing the vision with those three bits, what are the first steps a person might take in order to translate what might seem like maybe a mundane goal into more of a vision that inspires? I don’t know, maybe they’re thinking that they need a new IT system, or they need to change one process or approach they’re using at work for another one.

Jennifer Dulski
Right. So the key thing, the very first, most important thing is to just get started. Taking that first step is the thing that makes all the difference. And I sometimes describe it like starting a standing ovation. So, have you ever been the first person to stand up and clap in a standing ovation?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I have.

Jennifer Dulski
Wow, that’s awesome! Most people have not. I’m not surprised, actually, to hear that you have. But sometimes I ask this in big audiences people, and you might get one or two hands. And most people don’t do it, because it’s kind of scary to be that first one who exposes yourself a little bit and you think, “What if nobody joins me?” But generally people do. You don’t see many examples of having one person stand up and nobody else, not a single other person joining them. And once those first few people stand up and join the first person who’s clapping, then all of a sudden you get a standing ovation.
And movements start the same way. So, the first step can be something really small, for instance for the examples that you shared – you want to change a new system in your workplace – sometimes it’s just writing up your own thoughts and an outline of what you’d like to see happen and why. Sometimes it might be emailing people you know to start asking for help. Sometimes if it’s beyond your company it might be starting a petition or starting a Facebook group or starting a fundraiser. There are many, many things that can act as a first step. The key thing is, you need a little bit of courage, you need to be a little bit vulnerable because you have to be willing to ask other people for help, and you need to be determined, because movements don’t happen overnight; they take a lot of determination.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, any pro tips for those who are feeling some of the not-so-courageous feelings about going there with the vulnerability and exposure? Is there any psychological perspective or a word of encouragement you offer such folks?

Jennifer Dulski
So, what I use is a very clunky acronym – I call it IICDTICDA, which stands for “If I Can Do This, I Can Do Anything”. And my advice is to try to do other things that scare you, and then what happens is that every new thing seems less scary in comparison. So for people who are afraid of public speaking, instead of just trying right away to go out and speak in front of a big audience, I might say, “Well, what’s something else that scares you? Are you afraid of heights, are you afraid of flying?”
One example in my own life – I used to be pretty nervous about flying, and so when I was in college I went with a friend in one of those glider planes, which is a plane without an engine, which might seem kind of crazy. But I said to myself, “Well, people do this every day and they live through it, so I’m just going to push myself to the edge of my comfort zone, try something.” I was quite scared, but when I landed I had that IICDTICDA feeling – this notion of, “Well, if I could do that, then I can probably do anything.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And it can be any number of things that you fear, even if it’s not directly related to the piece that you’re after. I’m thinking about, you might have fears associated with – I’m thinking about previous guests who talked about going for “No” and just seeing what gets liberated when you do that. Like at a store, you just ask them for a discount, like, “Would $4.50 work for you?”

Jennifer Dulski
That’s right. I love that. And I think the standing ovation is actually a good example too. You could just be the first to stand up and clap in the next show that you see. It would be scary, but it would show you that life goes on, even if the worst case scenario happens, which is no one stands up to join you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. I dig it. So, you’re starting to take some action, you’re pushing through that, finding the courage. And then, how do we go about getting other folks enrolled and engaged and interested in this?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so it’s true – the next step is to mobilize other people. And one of the things that I found works well here is a) again – you have to ask for help, but b) empowering those people who work with you to take on a role that allows them to make a real difference too. So, an example that I love here is a woman named Jennifer Cardenas – she started a Facebook group in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. She was evacuating her home outside of Houston, and she started a group with people to say, “Let’s just keep in touch to see where we’re all evacuating to, to see if we can help each other.”
She invited 50 of her friends, and within three days that group grew to 150,000 people. And what Jennifer did was as those people joined, she embraced them. It’s all about embracing those first followers and getting them involved. So she invited 80 of her first people who joined the community to become volunteer moderators for the group. And then what happened a couple of days later, Jennifer ended up losing Internet service because she went to a place that didn’t have access in the storm. And those people that she had embraced as early supporters were able to keep running the community even though she wasn’t there. And they ultimately ended up working with the Coast Guard and the National Guard to rescue 8,000 people from Hurricane Harvey.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Really cool. So you give them a specific role and they feel empowered and excited and they’ve got it going. And that’s helpful. And then, what about maybe even trying to enroll decision-makers who are maybe not the direct beneficiaries, in terms of you’re getting other folks on board and invested into your starter group?

Jennifer Dulski
That’s right. So, many movements, even once you’ve had the courage to get started and you’ve rallied other people behind you – in many cases if there’s something you want to change, you may not have the power to do it yourself. There may be a decision-maker, either a company executive or CEO or elected officials, politicians, who have the power to make the change you want. And the technique that I recommend here – there’s actually a whole chapter on this in Purposeful called Get to Know Goliath, because my belief is that it’s about understanding whom and what motivates the decision-maker that you’re trying to persuade that will make you most effective. So, I give an example of a woman named Luanne Calvert who used be the CMO of Virgin America. And she was trying to persuade the CEO of the company to say “Yes” to their new safety video, which I don’t know if you’ve flown Virgin America, but they have…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I did. With all the musical numbers. [singing]

Jennifer Dulski
Exactly, exactly. You could sing along to it. But before that they had an animated funny cartoon safety video that everybody loved. The loyal followers of their brand really loved this video. And it wasn’t FAA compliant, so she had to change it, and she was really nervous about that because she had to replace this very well-loved video. And so when she came up with the idea for this musical rhyming video, she wasn’t sure that it would be approved.
And she used a technique that I recommend called “influence mapping”, where she looked at the person she was trying to persuade and she said, “Who are all the people that may influence him?” And in this case, she went to the flight attendants, she went to loyal frequent flyers, she went to other Virgin America executives, and in the end when she was making the final pitch to the CEO, it was one of those people in that influence mapping process who helped her get the case sold into the CEO, who finally approved it. And as you know, the rest is history. It was very, very successful. Not only did people love it, but it has been viewed on YouTube 13 million times. Safety video for an airline, which is pretty crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is good. And so, when it comes to that influence mapping, how do you get that picture, in terms of who has the ear of the decision-maker?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so I recommend just looking at the situation and trying to talk to the people that you think are close to that person. So if it’s inside an organization, you can generally tell because you know who the close confidants of that person are. If let’s say you’re trying to persuade your city counselor or the mayor of your town, you may not know exactly who their influence map is. And so, in that case you can start asking people.
You can also do a technique that I call “Make it easy to say ‘Yes’”, which basically means in addition to thinking about who influences them, you think about what are the things that motivate that person? So for a politician, you can understand that it is issues like the budget that they have to manage, the voters that they have to persuade in case they’re running for reelection, the media that they have to be able to influence and they want to still look good in the media.
So, there’s a young woman who I feature in Purposeful named Amanda Nguyen, who has been fighting for the rights of sexual assault survivors. She herself is a rape survivor from when she was in college. And she found that the criminal justice system is just completely broken in this area. And she went to try to change these laws and she gathered a group of very passionate volunteers that had, as I said, a variety of skills – some were lawyers, some were financial analysts, some were engineers – and she worked with them to understand decision-makers, in this case Congress.
And she drafted a sample law working with attorneys, she analyzed all the budget implications working with the finance folks, and she found other people who could tell their personal stories to motivate the emotions of the members of Congress. And she was successful in actually getting this law passed unanimously by the United States Congress, which almost never happens, as you know. One of 21 bills since 1989.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, thank you. You also talk about using criticism as an advantage. How does that work?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so the more successful you are in your effort to create a movement for change, the more criticism you are likely to be exposed to. It’s just true that the more public you get, people may have things to say about what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. And my view is that the people who are most successful here can both learn to separate the type of criticism that is perhaps outside of their control. So if people are criticizing you about your gender or your age or your appearance, generally I suggest people set that aside. And the rest of the criticism, which may be about exactly what you’re trying to do or how – then listening to it may have some value, in understanding other people’s perspectives.
And there’s a technique here I call “leveraging the naysayers”, where you can actually use that to your advantage. There’s a woman named Mary Lou Jepsen – she was starting an organization called One Laptop Per Child. They were trying to build these solar-powered, light, readable, very inexpensive laptops, which most people thought was not possible. And she took all the critics and used that as a way to debug her product.
She went and met with all the execs at a big tech company in Asia and they said, “There’s 23 reasons why this won’t work”, and she said, “Great. Let me take those back. I think I can solve 17 of them. And when I solve the rest, I’ll come back, see if you have any more criticism.” And she used that as a way to actually make her product work. So you can be tough enough to hear the criticism, sometimes it can make you better.

Pete Mockaitis
And you also talk about overcoming obstacles and failing well. How does that unfold?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so there are likely to be a lot of obstacles in your path, which is true no matter what you’re trying to build or accomplish. I sometimes call it “the festival of failure”, if you can see your failures as something that not only do you want to learn from, but you can kind of shout them from the rooftop so that other people may learn from them too.
And I feature a story of two women founders of a company called Little Passports. This was a subscription product for kids to teach kids about global citizenship. So they would send a package in the mail every month with two characters, and each month they would go to a different country and kids would get a stamp for their passport and a sticker for the map and some souvenirs from the country, and information and so forth. But Amy and Stella, who founded this company had so many obstacles along the way.
Originally it was, they bootstrapped the whole thing, and then they hit some personal struggles. Amy ended up getting divorced while she was pregnant with one of her children. Her father ended up dying right as they were founding the company, and she just had such a tough time personally. Having a co-founder there in Stella to help support her through that journey helped them get through that first set of obstacles, and then every one that came after that. They had an issue where the warehouse almost took all their inventory, they had trouble raising money, they had one issue where something caught on fire in one of their products. They just took one obstacle after another and kept going with their vision at the core. And now they are a quite successful, profitable company. They’re doing about $30 million in revenue and they’re teaching kids all over the world to be better global citizens.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. So some of the actionable pieces there is one, having support – a co-founder, and others who are on your team. And what are some other things, in terms of how you bounce back and find that resilience?

Jennifer Dulski
I describe it sometimes like climbing a mountain. So the other key piece of advice here is to just expect that there will be obstacles. So, if you remember that taking any of these kinds of leadership roles is like climbing a mountain – some days will be sunny and you brought a picnic lunch and you’re halfway up and you can see the top, and other days will be stormy and you feel like you’re at the bottom and you’ll never take another step.
And the key is to expect and know that there will be both kinds of days, and that neither will last forever. And just to keep climbing each day. So, push yourself on those cloudy days to keep taking another step and know it will get sunny again. And remember not to stop for the picnic lunch on the sunny day, because those sunny days won’t last forever either.

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

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, also I would mention that there is a Facebook group for the book, called Purposeful. So, they can find it at the website PurposefulBook.com – there’s a link to it. Even if people don’t read the book, but they want to participate in a community of people who are helping each other push their movements forward, whatever they may be – I would encourage people to join that. It’s free, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you. And now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jennifer Dulski
So one of my favorite quotes is, “Anyone who thinks they are too small to make a difference, hasn’t tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room.” [laugh]

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

Jennifer Dulski
So, one of my favorite studies is from Tom Gilovich at Cornell, who was one of my professors. And this piece of research says that people regret in the short term things they do. He calls it “errors of commission”. So, “Oh my gosh, I shouldn’t have asked that woman out. She said ‘No’. It was so embarrassing.” But in the long term, people tend to regret things they don’t do, or “errors of omission”. So, “I should have asked that woman out. She might have been the love of my life.” And this is the thing we go to our deathbeds regretting, is the things we never tried to do.

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

Jennifer Dulski
Favorite book is Gung Ho!, which is by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. It is a book about leadership as taught through the lessons of a Native American folktale. And my favorite chapter is called The Gift of the Goose, and it’s about how geese fly in a V and they rotate who flies at the front and who takes the leadership role. And everyone in the back honks to cheer on the leader goose.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that why they’re honking?

Jennifer Dulski
That’s why they honk. They honk to cheer on the leader, which I think is a great metaphor for all of us to think about cheering each other on. And that sometimes will be the leader and sometimes we encourage other people to step forward and lead.

Pete Mockaitis
So does that mean the goose in front is not honking, but all the other geese are?

Jennifer Dulski
That is my understanding. I could be wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
I never knew this about geese. Thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jennifer Dulski
One of my favorite tools is called the “horizon conversation”, and this also is on the resources page of the book website, if people want to … I learned it from an HR exec that I used to work with, and have adopted it since then. But it basically allows people to outline what they want on the horizon of their careers, where they might want to go, and then map out the gaps they have between what they know now and what they want to achieve, such that they can make sure the projects, jobs, etcetera, that they take in between are helping them fill those key gaps.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool, thank you.

Jennifer Dulski
And I’ve used it myself as well.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Jennifer Dulski
A favorite habit. I think one thing I use a lot is just trying to remember a sense of perspective. So, when things get very difficult, which happens certainly from time to time – I try to remember those moments in my own life that were really tough. I tell a story in the book about having being diagnosed with a brain tumor in my late 20s. Got that call at work in the middle of the day. Clearly no matter what challenges I’m struggling with at work on any given day, they’re not as bad as that day. And so, to remember that we all have days like that and each of us, people sitting around us may be having a day like that. It just helps to keep everything in perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get Kindle book highlighted or retweeted or repeated back to you?

Jennifer Dulski
I think the thing that I’ve shared that’s been the most retweeted is this concept of the work-life mashup, is what I call it. I wrote an article in Fortune. I tried to call it “Work-Life Balance is Bullsh*t”, but they wouldn’t let me. And they titled it “There’s No Such Thing As Work-Life Balance”. But my general concept here is that our work and our lives have become inextricably intertwined, and that one way to make the most of that is to consider it a mashup, or layers on top of each other.
And I had a quote that says, “I’m still a mom when I walk into work, and I’m still a leader of a company when I go home at night.” So, neither of those things go away, and it means that if I get a call from my kid’s school in the middle of the work day, I’m going to take it, and if something urgent happens at work in the middle of dinner, I’ll probably take that call too. And that particular nugget has been retweeted a lot of times.

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

Jennifer Dulski
So I am @jdulski on all the platforms – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. And the website is PurposefulBook.com, which also has a link to the Facebook group.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jennifer Dulski
The final challenge I’d issue is IICDTICDA – the one I mentioned before – “If I Can Do This, I Can Do Anything”. And I’d just encourage people to do one scary thing outside of work that might make them more brave inside of work.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Jen, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing your wisdom. Good luck in all you’re up to, at Facebook with groups, and the book, and everything!

Jennifer Dulski
Thanks so much. It was great to be here.

Jul 30
0

326: Making LinkedIn Work for You with Brenda Bernstein

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Brenda Bernstein says: "You actually get to inform how people experience you... based on what you write in your LinkedIn profile."

Brenda Bernstein enumerates the top mistakes people make when crafting their LinkedIn profiles and what you should do instead.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Two keys to crafting an eye-grabbing LinkedIn profile
  2. How to grow your LinkedIn network past 500 people quickly and easily
  3. The case for making recommendations

About Brenda

Brenda Bernstein, Founder and Senior Editor at The Essay Expert LLC, is the author of How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile, a book that held the #1 bestseller spot in Amazon’s business writing skills list for over two years. A sought-after speaker and award-winning businesswoman and resume writer, Brenda is a dedicated student of leadership and a trained life coach. Armed with a B.A. in English with honors from Yale and a J.D. with honors from NYU Law School, she has been partnering with job seekers and college applicants for over 15 years to create effective written application documents. Brenda practiced law for 10 years in New York City and spent a year as a J.D. Career Advisor with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Office of Career Services. She currently works part-time as a Law School Admissions Consultant for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Brenda Bernstein Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Brenda, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Brenda Bernstein
Thank you Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to start at the beginning in terms of maybe your early childhood not to enter therapy, but you were in Sesame Street when you were a child. What is the story here?

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, and I really need therapy after that. Well, the story is my sister grew up in New York City. My mom just thought, “Hey, I’ll take them to interview.” We passed whatever test and the next thing you knew they were calling us in to be on Sesame Street. We did a few shows. I learned – I met Big Bird and Oscar. Not everyone knows this, but it’s the same actor in Big Bird and Oscar.

Pete Mockaitis
How about that?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah. I remember seeing Snuffleupagus like hanging from the ceiling. I always loved Snuffleupagus. Sat in Big Bird’s nest.

One of the episodes I was on I was doing tongue twisters with Bob. We were sitting on the stoop and saying, “Rubber baby buggy bumpers,” and I said “Rubber baby buggy bumpers, rubber baby buggy bumpers,” many, many, many times. That was the beginning of my speaking career right there.

Pete Mockaitis
An auspicious beginning.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes. Give me any tongue twister.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, they must have liked you because if you kept coming back, that’s great.

Brenda Bernstein
I kept coming back. The last time that they invited me, they asked me to do a voice over. They show the animals and you’re supposed to say what the animals were doing and I completely failed on that. It was not a good match for me. I just hadn’t – I didn’t even know what to say. That was my last time on Sesame Street.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you had to create the script. It wasn’t just read it. It’s like what is this animal thinking, feeling, trying to convey right now.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s challenging for anybody.

Brenda Bernstein
Well, for some kids it’s like they naturally do that. I did not. Maybe I was too old and jaded already. I couldn’t be like, “Look, he’s eating.” It just wasn’t me.

Pete Mockaitis
Jaded at an early age.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to talk to you all about LinkedIn profiles. You wrote the book, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile. I love a direct title that’s very clear, like How to Be Awesome at Your Job, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile. I’ll let you kick it off. There’s probably many ways we could approach this question, but how does one write a killer LinkedIn profile?

Brenda Bernstein
I thought you were going to say, “How does one write such a great book about writing killer LinkedIn profiles?” but how does one write a killer LinkedIn profile.

Well, there are quite a few aspects to it. Part of it is how you write it and what words you put down into the profile and then part of it is how you use it once you’ve got it.

My book goes over 18 common mistakes that people make in writing their LinkedIn profiles. It tells you how to avoid them and also has some bonus tips at the end. Really it ends up being 25 – at least 25 tips with many sub-tips in between. It takes a lot to write a killer LinkedIn profile if you’re really going to get the results that are possible out of LinkedIn. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Let’s orient there to results and the why behind this thing maybe before going into as much of the how.

It’s funny I had a listener who mentioned that she – I said, “Oh hey, could I use your image and quote just from your LinkedIn profile as a testimonial since you like this stuff?” She’s like, “Oh yeah, I don’t have a LinkedIn profile. I know I should.”

But if there’s listeners in that boat, who’s like, “Oh yeah, I probably should,” could you unpack what’s behind the should and the results and the benefits associated with putting in this investment of effort?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, in one sense it does depend. Everything depends. I don’t have too many hard and fast rules that I would tell every person on the planet that they need to have a LinkedIn profile. Do you happen to know what that person’s career – what industry she was in, what kind of job she did?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. She was working in sort of pharmaceuticals/medical devices, that space.

Brenda Bernstein
Oh, then she definitely needs to have a LinkedIn profile. I was going to say if she were a social worker, an elementary school teacher, some people like that it’s really not that important to have a LinkedIn profile other than for networking.

But if you’re in pharmaceutical/medical device the recruiters are out there looking for you. They’re on LinkedIn. Not to be on LinkedIn is a big mistake if you’re in a field like that, like any of those professional fields.

If you’re in IT, if you’re in any type of big level manager, if you’re in – if you’re like consumer packaged goods, any of those types of industries and type – if you’re a project manager of any kind, any kind of technology, IT, the recruiters are on LinkedIn. They’re looking for you.

The jobs are being posted on LinkedIn, so it’s a really good place to look for a job and hopefully you’ll always have a little bit of an eye out for what might be the next best thing for yourself.

If you don’t care about meeting other professionals in your industry, and you don’t care about being recruited for a bigger and better job, and you just want to stay exactly where you are and maybe not have your customers be able to find out anything about you, then don’t have a LinkedIn profile.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. There you have it. It’s like, “I am completely content where I am and I would like an extra measure of privacy,” that would be the segment of person or people that ought not to have a LinkedIn profile or would not really benefit I guess in the sense of recruiters and jobs are living on LinkedIn and you’re missing out. That might not matter so much.

But for the healthy majority, it sure sounds like yes, you want. I hear it said well. It might have been Mac Prichard who said – or maybe it was you – I don’t know where this came from but I thought it was a great turn of a phrase, it was, “Oh, you’re not on LinkedIn, you must be retired.”

Brenda Bernstein
Uh huh.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, oh boy, that really puts a point on it.

Brenda Bernstein
Plenty of retired people are on LinkedIn as well because you get to be in groups and keep learning and growing. There’s usefulness even when you are retired to be on LinkedIn. Or to be a mentor for someone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Right or sort of nonprofit, volunteering, board recruitment and membership, certainly. Okay, we’re not here to put any guilt or shame on anybody if you happen to not yet have a LinkedIn profile or if it’s embarrassingly old or out of date. No judgment. We’re just looking to make the most of this asset should you choose to take advantage of it.

Boy, you said there’s 18 or 25 mistakes folks make, could you unpack a little bit in terms of what are some of the most dangerous and most widespread of these mistakes that we should rectify right away?

Brenda Bernstein
Sure. Well, I’ll talk about a few of them. One, and it’s the thing that happens before anyone finds you on LinkedIn at all is to not be found. If you have a LinkedIn profile and no one finds you, it has – there’s still a little benefit because if you give people your LinkedIn profile address, then they can still look at your profile. But it’s important to be locatable on LinkedIn.

Really to do that you need to have keywords in the right places. You also need to have a very robust network, at a minimum 500 connections on LinkedIn. The combination of that keyword placement and keyword density, I think people generally know what that … of, but … just be the words that people are going to be using when they put them into the search box. You want to come up for those words.

The more times those words show up in the key places, which are your headline and your job titles and then after that some other places in your profile, the more likely you are to come up in people’s searches. That’s really important to be findable, locatable on LinkedIn.

Then you want to look good once people find you. One of the first things that people see when they look at your LinkedIn profile is of course your photo. A big mistake the people make on LinkedIn, not having a photo at all, having a photo on there with their dog or their cat. Let’s get serious here. We’re not talking about Facebook.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Got you.

Brenda Bernstein
This is LinkedIn. This is your professional presence. You want to have a professional headshot on LinkedIn. You want to have a light background usually works a lot better on LinkedIn and just have it be you, your head and your shoulders, maybe up to your shoulders. That’s mostly what people want to see.

Now, if you’re in real estate and you want to have a sign or a house along with you, there’s certain professions where it’s okay to have something else in the background, but for most of us, it’s going to be – I want to be just me and the background. That makes a difference.

We are human beings and we are attracted by something that looks professional. A recruiter who looks at a profile, one of them has a picture and another one doesn’t have a picture, they’re going to be more interested in talking to the person with the picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, got you.

Brenda Bernstein
Then the other part of likeability I would say on LinkedIn – and you’re starting to get a little hint at my formula. We have locatability, likeability. I’m getting the L’s going here.

Likeability, in addition to the photo, you might want to have a nice background to your photo. That’s where you can get a little bit creative. Again, you want to keep it professional and don’t have any – … too many words in there because depending on what interface it’s showing on, that photo will be located in different places on the background and you don’t want it to cover up something important and just not look right.

You also want to use an image that it’s okay if your photo is in different places along that spectrum. LinkedIn has a default, sort of a constellation that they have back there. That’s boring. If you do have a background that shows anyone who looks that you’ve taken an extra care and creativity to put into your profile, says something about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you mean background, not the background in your photo, but a separate feature in LinkedIn, which is the background image.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, the background image.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. All right.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, thanks for that clarification. Then we have the headline. In the headline you want to make sure you say who you are. One big mistake is people let their job title automatically populate the headline.

You have control over that. You can override it and you can say your job title, but then follow it up with some other things. You want to use keywords in there to go back to the locatability and maybe even have a little bit of your unique selling proposition if you can fit it in and not – I wouldn’t … at the expense of keywords, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little bit of a tagline up there as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us a few examples there of sort of headlines that are missing an opportunity versus oh yeah, just perfect?

Now I can give you the example of my own, which when I first wrote my headline it said ‘Founder and senior editor at the Essay Expert.’ Now that doesn’t help anyone find a resume writer. It doesn’t help anyone find a LinkedIn expert. That’s just one example.

Now once I myself learned about headlines and keywords, my headline now says, ‘Resume and LinkedIn profile writer, author, speaker, executive resumes, C-level resumes, executive LinkedIn profiles, college essays, law school admission essays, MBA admission essays.’ You see the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
You put all that in the headline, so then I’m thinking about as you see the search results of person’s name and then headline, will you get to read all of that or will it get clipped off in search results or as folks are browsing?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, you won’t be able to see all of it necessarily, but on desktop version if someone looks they’ll be able to see that whole thing once they look at your profile.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, so then your emphasis there was really all about the keywords such that when people are searching that, they find just that and that’s sorts of the main thing as opposed to like a branding thing of ‘A data-driven professional passionate about the future of the automotive industry.’

Brenda Bernstein
Right, those words aren’t going to get you a lot of mileage in your headline. Here’s another example, someone who wrote, ‘Quality assurance analyst,’ in their headline.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Brenda Bernstein
So that’s okay because if someone is looking for a quality assurance analyst, that’s going to help them out, but if you have quality assurance analyst and then you have a little divider, say, ‘… development, client communication, automation engineer,’ then you give yourself more chances to be found.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. I’m with you there. You want to be findable with a good headline and you can override from just your position to what’s there. You want to look good with a good photo, light background and then using the LinkedIn background extra feature there. What else?

Brenda Bernstein
The next thing really is your summary. That’s your opportunity. You’ve got 2,000 characters. A lot of people – a big mistake that people make is to take their resume summary, which isn’t always the greatest in the first place, and then they copy and paste it.

It’s this paragraph that says, ‘Results oriented, proven track record,’ in my words, blah, blah, blah, and they just copy and paste it into their LinkedIn profile. They’re not taking advantage of the entire 2,000 characters that are available, not that you have to use all the 2,000, but you have some room here to get creative.

You actually have an opportunity to show a little bit of your personality, so maybe some of your accomplishments, all in your LinkedIn summary.

I have an example of a marketing person who wrote in her LinkedIn summary all about how she wanted to be a football player when she grew up. Actually she says when she was little she boldly claimed to anyone who would listen, “I wanted to drive a garbage truck.” Then she moved to Wisconsin and declared she’d be the next Green Bay Packers quarterback after Brett Favre retired.

She really is bringing herself to this LinkedIn summary. It’s kind of fun. It grabs some attention. Now the one thing to keep in mind with the LinkedIn summary is that this is one where you don’t see the whole thing when you first look at it. You’ve got to click on ‘Show more.’

Think about maybe the first three or four lines to make sure that you’re communicating who you are in those first few lines or grabbing some attention enough to make people want to click on ‘Show more.’ When I write LinkedIn profiles for people, I definitely use those first few lines to hit them with the most important things and make no mistake about who I am or what I offer. Then you can talk more.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. That’s interesting there because it seems like there’s maybe multiple approaches with that summary because with that fun ”I want to be a garbage truck driver,” I guess if you think about the person on the other side of that, it might kind of catch their attention like, “Hm, okay, that’s a little different. What’s her story? I want to learn more.” It might intrigue them or they be like, “I don’t care.” It’s sort of a turn off.
How do you think about what style or tone is best for what context?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, there’s a way you could do both I would say for one is that maybe you start out really telling them who you are and then you can tell a little bit of your story and show your personality. That would be one.

Then the other is who are you and what is your personality. If your personality is to talk about how you wanted to drive a garbage truck when you grew up, then maybe you start that way. If your personality is a lot more straightforward, business oriented, then you’re going to start that way.

The other good news is that you can always change your LinkedIn profile anytime you want. You can save what you had there before. You can try something else. You can’t have two LinkedIn profiles. You can get in trouble for that. But you can try different things at different times.

Make sure you save anything that you decide to change. Save the old one. If you don’t like how something is performing, you can always do something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so then what are some other key components and how should we make sure we’re not making mistakes there?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, you do want to make sure to have, as I said, a robust network. I didn’t talk – go into much detail about that, but 500 connections is really a minimum. If you don’t have that number of connections, you probably are going to have a hard time finding people when you search because the search results come up based on how a close connection you are to them.

You want to be close to a lot of people so that when you search for automation engineer in Chicago, you’re really going to get good results because you’re connected with a lot of people.

In order to build that network – a lot of people are like, “Oh my God, 500, that seems like such a big number.” It’s probably not as big as you think it is. Once you start to look and there are ways that you can look at your alumni from any schools that you’ve gone to and start connecting with alumni.

Other people are like, “Oh 500, well, I only want quality connections.” Well, don’t you think that a lot of the people you went to school with, especially if it’s a top-level college or any kind of graduate school, are going to be high quality connections? I would hope so. Even if you don’t know them personally, most people who went to a school with you are going to be open to connecting.

If you joined groups, then you also have a really great source of connections. You were going to say something?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I found that LinkedIn is just very, almost creepily wise when it comes to suggesting people I may know. It’s like how do you even know that I know that person? I can’t even see what you’re seeing about knowledge. I’m sure they’re in deep with some big data things that make it super smart.

But that’s kind of what I found when I was trying to – way back in the day when I was below 500, I’d say, “Oh, I do know a lot of those people,” so I’d connect, connect, connect, connect, connect the ones they suggested. Then sure enough, a week later, many of those people had already accepted and so LinkedIn had new wisdom from which to draw and suggest even more people that I might know. I’d say, “Oh, sure,” connect, connect, connect.

In a way it did it for me. I just had to sit down with a little bit of space in between and review the people they thought I knew.

Brenda Bernstein
Yup, yeah. Most people know a lot more people than they realize or are interested in knowing more people than they realize.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Are there some sort of slick moves to get all of your Facebook connections to become LinkedIn connections? Is that possible?

Brenda Bernstein
I don’t know of anything like that. There could be some interface app somewhere that does that, but I don’t know. There is a way to get anyone in your address book, but I wouldn’t do that because sometimes your address book has a bunch of junk in it and you don’t want to just blindly, blithely send out connection request to everyone in your email address book because you’ll get rejections and it will be kind of messy.

If you get too many people saying they don’t know you, then they can stop you from sending out more requests, so I wouldn’t go that route. I wouldn’t do anything actually automated in terms of building your network. I’d reach out to people one-on-one.

Especially if you do anything automated, then the best that any program could do would be to send out a generic message. I’m really a proponent of customizing every invitation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I like that a lot. I want to go there in a second. With the address book stuff though, it is possible right, to sort of deselect all and then get choosy like, “Okay, LinkedIn you can take a look at my Gmail, but from there I’m going to be – I’m going to pick and choose who I’m actually requesting to connect with.”

Brenda Bernstein
I think you can, but so many people – it’s very tricky and not intuitive. A lot of people send out invitations to their entire address book by accident when they’re maybe trying to do that, so I just don’t recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you, so risk.

Brenda Bernstein
In addition to the issue of it’s just going to be the generic invitation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, let’s talk about inviting people well and customizing each.

Lately, it’s funny, way back, not too far back, I had an episode with Steve Sims and he mentioned he liked to do events with a password. It’s like if you said the password at the door, then it meant that you knew whatever the right people to be invited and it showed that you were up for some fun because the password was silly like, “Name the Teletubbies.”

I asked some time ago and I’ve gotten a lot of these requests, so send some more please, listeners, I’d say, “Hey, go ahead and ask me to connect on LinkedIn and the password is a lyric from a boy band song.” I would get in all of these fun connection requests like, “Pete, it’s tearing up my heart when I …” It makes it a lot of fun to go to LinkedIn and connect with listeners and such.

But then it kind of became clear how I was also getting so many poor messages. Some have no message or ‘I’d like to add you as a connection on LinkedIn.’

I think the worst I’ve seen – I won’t say his name – but it said something like, “Hi Pete, in an effort to build my financial services connections I am reaching out to you.” It’s like, well, that’s sort of all about you and not all about sort of what we have in common or others would say, “It appears that we have similar interests.” It’s like, I think you say that to everybody.

On my own experience, I’m looking for a touch of personalization, customization, there’s something that connects us. “I listen to your podcast.” “Awesome, that’s great. Cool, thank you.” Anyway, that’s been my experience, but let’s get your expert take. What makes a bad versus a good invitation request messaging?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, I agree with everything you said, Pete. Anything that’s generic is not the best. There are people – I really love your little game that you played with send me some boy band lyrics. That’s really great. I know someone who will always require a new connection to have a conversation with him on the phone before he’ll accept the invitation. That’s a strategy people have used.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, so he just sends an email back like, “Hey, thanks for reaching out. We can schedule a time to chat if you want to be connected.”

Brenda Bernstein
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Then there you go. Okay.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. Of course, there’s some people I’m sure he just rejects, but if it’s someone who looks like that he would be interested in connecting, then he’ll have that conversation.

One way to do it let’s say you’re – if you’re reaching out to alumni, it might be enough just to say, “Hey, we’re both alumni of this school. I’d love to connect with you. How’s life after Kalamazoo University,” whatever it is.

When you’re connecting with people in groups, you generally have some common interest I should hope. Maybe it’s someone who posted something in a group, so you can refer to what they posted and say that you found it interesting.

You might connect with someone who posted an article in LinkedIn Publisher and you read the article and you liked it. You can tell them how much you enjoyed their article, “and especially this part.” Prove to them that you read it.

I have been reaching out to coaches. I reach out to a lot of people on the Forbes Coaches Council. I’ve written to people saying, “Hi, I see you’re a member of the Forbes Coaching Council. I’m an executive resume writer. I think we could be valuable connections for each other. I look forward to having you in my network.” Just that. It’s very simple, but pretty much everyone accepts my invitation when I write stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. There you go. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or detailed. It’s just sort of like, “Oh, okay.” It just sort of is even almost like a surface or summary answer, like, “Who are you and why should we connect?” “Oh, okay. That’s you and that makes sense.” Okay, that’s it. Done.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. Yes. Just for the record, no I do not recommend connecting with every single person from Pakistan and India who says they want connect with you. I think it’s fine to reject some connections, which basically means just don’t respond to them and then the person doesn’t get – they don’t get something that says you rejected them. They just never get connected with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, if I click ignore, are they told that I clicked ignore?

Brenda Bernstein
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I didn’t think so because no one’s told me, “You have been ignored.”

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve never seen that. My thing is I accept most, even if it’s sort of light on the details because I sort of assume with thousands of listeners, oh, you’re probably a podcast listener. You heard the episode about the password, so it’s all good.

But maybe – I don’t know fair or unfair, folks who are doing sort of investment/advisory things and marketing sounding things, I usually say no because it’s often the beginning of a sales funnel. If any listeners try to connect with me and you happen to be in those industries, I probably ignored you and it’s not personal. But you can – I think you can try again. Is that true, Brenda? Is that possible?

Brenda Bernstein
You can. You might need to-

Pete Mockaitis
Get a message.

Brenda Bernstein
To withdraw your request and then reinstate it. There is a way to do that.

You can actually like if you send one of those generic messages by accident, which sometimes happens, because it’s not necessarily easy to send a customized message. If you click on ‘Connect’ from a list, from a search that came up, that automatic message is going out and you can’t stop it.

If you connect from your phone, if you hit ‘Connect,’ it’s going to send a generic message. On your phone what you need to do, and a lot of people don’t realize this, but you can send a customized message. But you need to click on – I think they just changed it. It says ‘More.’ When you hit on ‘More’ then you get a personalize invite option in the dropdown. But most people don’t know that.

If you do get a generic message, maybe someone just connected with you from their phone and they didn’t even know. I wouldn’t be offended either, but if you’re a really savvy LinkedIn user, you’re going to know how to send a customized message from anywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well that’s helpful to know right there. It’s like, oops, you might accidently do that. But you can withdraw it and then do it with more customization if you accidently hit that.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. As long as they haven’t accepted it yet, you can actually go into your LinkedIn interface and find all the connection requests that you made and you can manage those requests and you can undo one of them if you want to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is really useful stuff. Brenda tell me, any other sort of top do’s and don’ts that you want to make sure we get out there when it comes to LinkedIn?

Brenda Bernstein
Those are really my top, top ones. I would say the other things to consider are giving and getting recommendations. It’s always a really good thing to do. If you haven’t given a recommendation in four years on LinkedIn, think about whether it might be time to do that. If you haven’t given any, maybe it’s time to start requesting those because those are really great to have to show off who you are on your LinkedIn profile.

You get to show off by getting them and by giving them. If there are any recruiters out there who might be looking for you, they do look at recommendations that you’ve given, so keep that in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that just to evaluate, “Hey, is this a generous person who knows LinkedIn or can they write well,” or kind of what are they looking at when they – to see about the recommendations you’re giving?

Brenda Bernstein
I think it’s mostly to say, “Oh, this is a person who supports their colleagues, who cares to take the time to do something nice for another person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And it is so nice in terms of you can just surprise and delight someone by pulling up their profile, writing them a recommendation. Maybe you worked with them years ago. Then – and they love it. It’s a fun moment like, “Hey Pete, how are you doing? That was so nice. Thank you.” It just puts everyone in a good mood. Who doesn’t love to get a compliment or a thank you?

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
In a public way that helps them out too.

Brenda Bernstein
Absolutely. Then the final thing, which probably one of the biggest mistakes that anyone makes on LinkedIn is they write their LinkedIn profile and it’s like the gym membership. You buy the gym membership and then you never got to the gym. It’s a similar principle with LinkedIn.

You can have a great LinkedIn profile and then if you just sit there and you don’t check your LinkedIn messages or you do, but you only ever have conversations on LinkedIn about anything and you never actually have a call, phone call with anyone, and you never actually go out and meet for coffee with someone that you met on LinkedIn, you’re not going to get results from your LinkedIn profile.

It actually does require being active, going back, updating things when it’s ready to update them, reaching out to people and having conversations. That’s how to really get value out of LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, any final thoughts before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Brenda Bernstein
I think that’s good. We can move on. Yeah.

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

Brenda Bernstein
Wow, it’s like my favorite quote changes on a daily basis. Yesterday I saw this video talking about bamboo trees and how bamboo trees take five years to grow but the majority of that time, they’re under the soil and they have to be tended to and watered. Then all of the sudden within five weeks, the bamboo tree grows to 90 feet.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool.

Brenda Bernstein
That’s amazing, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Brenda Bernstein
It was such a great metaphor for so many things in life, how you really need to put time in and you might not see the results. People might be telling you, “I don’t see any results. It’s not working.”

[36:00]

But if you have that confidence and you’re nurturing and watering something, then when it’s ready to bust out of the ground, it’s going to do that. It can move really fast. I think there’s something about trusting the process and keeping on keeping on and nurturing your dream.

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

Brenda Bernstein
Here is a bit of research that I think is really cool.

This is one where a bunch of students were told before they were going to go into a lecture they were told – half the students were told that the lecturer was very warm and the other half of the students were told, “Oh, this lecturer is kind of cold. He’s kind of a cold person.”

Then all of the students went into to see the lecture and what do you know? It was the same lecture. Everyone saw the same thing. But the ones who had been told that the professor was warm, came out talking about how warm the professor was. The ones who went in being told the professor was kind of cold, came out saying, “Well, yeah, that was a good lecture, but the professor was kind of cold.”

What strikes me about this for LinkedIn is that how we write our LinkedIn profile informs how people expect us to be when we meet them. If you write something on LinkedIn that’s very business focused, people are going to expect you, if they meet you in person, for you to be business focused. If you write something that’s a little more creative and playful, they’re going to expect you to be more creative and playful.

You actually get to inform how people experience you in real life or in an interview based on what you write in your LinkedIn profile. I think that’s pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Brenda Bernstein
Besides How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Brenda Bernstein
That’s a hard one. One – I read this such a long time ago, but it’s the first one that just popped into my head. It’s called The Time Traveler’s Wife. I know they made a movie of it. The movie wasn’t very good, but the book was so good.

Pete Mockaitis
What spoke to you about The Time Traveler’s Wife?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, it was – it’s clearly about time travel, of course. I think it’s – there’s something about loyalty, like this person keeps coming back to the same – it’s a man who kind of comes in and out of time travel and keeps coming back to the same person over and over again as she grows. It’s just a beautiful story of loyalty and connection and longing.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Brenda Bernstein
Does a kitchen appliance count?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Brenda Bernstein
All right, yeah. My blender is definitely my favorite. That’s my favorite tool of all time. I use it every day. I make smoothies in it. I make salad dressing in it. I make blended soups in it. I make pesto in it. I don’t know how I’d live without it.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it a Vitamix, Blendtec or just sort of commonplace?

Brenda Bernstein
It’s a Blendtec.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Brenda Bernstein
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
High end.

Brenda Bernstein
Oh yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Brenda Bernstein
My favorite habit, well, making smoothies. That’s probably one of my favorite books too is Zero Belly Smoothies. I swear I’ve gotten the best smoothie recipes. They’re so delicious from that book. I often when I’m like, “Oh, what am I going to do with all this stuff in my house,” and I go to that book and I discover a smoothie. That’s probably my favorite book right now.

My favorite other habit, oh, I’m a devoted yoga practitioner. I love yoga. I love going upside down. What I didn’t talk about is one of my childhood successes was I was a New Jersey state champion in one of the lower levels of competition in gymnastics. That was when I was 12. I actually won the New Jersey state championship.

Pete Mockaitis
Congratulations.

Brenda Bernstein
That was pretty cool. I love being upside down. I can’t do all of the things that I could when I was 12 by any means, but I’m – I love going into yoga and going into a handstand and just de-stressing and breathing and sometimes dancing. I go to yoga class at least four times a week. It’s – yeah, it’s just part of my life. It’s never going to go away that I can tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks as you’re teaching them your wisdom?

Brenda Bernstein
I don’t know if this is a nugget, but I think something people notice about me is how much I go for – well, okay, here’s how it can be a nugget. I tend to – when I decide that I’m going to go for something and achieve something, I tend to be pretty tenacious and pretty persistent. I like to say – and overcome some struggles and hardships and pain sometimes to get to where I want to go.

I like to say that, “There’s one guaranteed way to achieve any goal and that is to keep taking action toward the goal and never stop.” Maybe that’s it. If you just keep going for it, that’s the guaranteed way to get it until you’re dead. Either you meet your goal or you’re dead.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah.

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

Brenda Bernstein
I would point them to my website, which is – it’s a little hard to hear spoken, but I’ll do my best here. It’s www.TheEssayExpert.com, so that’s spelled T-H-E-E-S-S-A-Y-E-X-P-E-R-T – TheEssayExpert.com.

You can also find my book, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile, on Amazon. I also have How to Write a Winning Resume and How to Write a Stellar Executive Resume, so all those are available on Amazon. If you do come to my website, you’ll have an opportunity to sign up for my blog.

You can also find me on LinkedIn. I’m Brenda Bernstein on LinkedIn, so please feel free to connect with me there and write me a nice customized message and I will respond back and send you links to all those goodies that you might want. I’d love to have you reading my weekly blog. I post things about life and leadership and LinkedIn and resumes and all kinds of things that probably of interest to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, I would say on your LinkedIn profile, say something great about your job because your employers will like to see that and the recruiters will like to see that. Talk about some really positive aspect of what you’re doing in your job right now and that will look good for your company and it will look good for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank out. Well, Brenda, this has been so helpful. Thank you for setting the record straight on LinkedIn. I wish you lots of luck in all you’re up to.

Brenda Bernstein
Thank you so much. Likewise Pete.

Jul 25
0

325: Managing Difficult Conversations (with yourself and others) with Lauren Zander

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Lauren Zander says: "Everybody's already living with the worst-case scenario. It's only getting better from here."

Unabashed life coach Lauren Zander explains why you should have difficult conversations and how you can take charge of them.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to separate yourself from your recurring mental patterns
  2. The best communication approach during a worst-case scenario
  3. The ways you lie and what they cost you

About Lauren

Lauren Handel Zander is the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Handel Group®, an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her coaching methodology, The Handel Method®, is taught in over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford Graduate School of Business, NYU, and the New York City Public School System. Lauren is also the author of Maybe It’s You: Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, Love Your Life (Published by Hachette Book Group, April 2017), a no-nonsense, practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but how to actually get there. She has spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private and corporate clients, including executives at Vogue, BASF, and AOL. Lauren has been a featured expert in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Women’s Health, Dr. Oz, and Marie Claire and she is a regular contributor to Businessweek and the Huffington Post.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Lauren Zander Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Lauren, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Lauren Zander
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun in this conversation. I wanted to get started, you unabashedly refer to yourself as a life coach in your bios. Sometimes that has a bad rap or a jab associated with it.

I’d love it if maybe you can orient us, you’ve probably heard it all. What are some jokes or stereotypes or razzes you’ve gotten and how do you think about it and how do you break the stereotype?

Lauren Zander
First of all, I have been offered or recommended many, many times to bail from the name life coach.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh right.

Lauren Zander
Completely. The amount of companies over the 15 years that have been like, “Leave.” Right, so …. I … I decided I was still going to lead the way. I feel like I help lead the way. Sometimes the lines start to roll out. Something has to be hard. It’s okay that there’s a lot of different quality of everything. Everything is not created equal. Neither is this field.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Lauren Zander
You wouldn’t go to all chiropractors. Once upon the time there were the ones that were remarkable that made people understand it was a worthy way to deal with your body. It’s pioneering. It’s a pain in the butt.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. I’m with you. I’ll tell you, even when I was looking at your publicity piece, I was like, “Oh, oh, but there’s really a lot of substance here,” not that I should be surprised.

You’re right. It’s a mixed bag. I’ve had coaches and done coaching. It’s been extraordinarily transformationally wonderful. There have been other instances where it’s just sort of like, “Really? What?”

Lauren Zander
Right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
I think it’s sort of like lawyers I guess can have a reputation, there are so many lawyer jokes out there.

Lauren Zander
Yes.

[3:00]

Pete Mockaitis
Like what do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. Ha ha ha. Are there life coach jokes? I don’t know if I’ve heard any explicitly articulated.

Lauren Zander
No, there’s digs, like, “Oh yes, they did a weekend and now they’re a life coach. Yeah, she’s 24. She’s a life coach.” Can someone explain how that age could have a life enough to coach one? I don’t think anyone’s trying to be funny.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I hear you. It’s all hard elbows.

Lauren Zander
It’s sharp and potentially accurate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Anyway, you bring the goods. One really cool thing about you is so you have the Handel method.

Lauren Zander
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And you even from that emerge a ‘Design Your Life’ course that has been smashingly popular and effective over at MIT. Could you just share a little bit of that story for what is the Handel method and how did this story unfold?

Lauren Zander
I’ve been a coach since I was 28 – 29. Now I’m 48, so it’s been a really long time. I started having many client and then repeat, perform – like what am I doing? And then I needed to understand what I was doing, and then I wanted to be able to teach it to someone else, like if I really had something. I wasn’t just this unicorn, if that makes sense, like some weird animal that was a one hit – like I could do it, but nobody else could.

It was very important to me to figure out how to turn it into material that anyone could understand and tools and conversations and philosophy. It had to have all of that in order for it to be something that could exist

It needs to be able to be reproduced and it has to be engaging and great and work. It has to be amazing.

Because I had a relationship with a professor who I coached and I coached him to get into MIT, I’m like, “Let me prove I exist. Let me show you what I do.” Then can I do it there and I really want to turn it into a methodology.

It’s even true that I developed it at MIT and they own … percent because I did all the development of the actual content there even though I had been doing it for years already before I started there.

Pete Mockaitis
What percent do they own?

Lauren Zander
One percent. They already signed it back. It’s like on some level they – it’s one percent.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you.

Lauren Zander
It’s adorable.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s adorable.

Lauren Zander
And I’m very proud to be in business.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good language for a contract term. It’s adorable.

Lauren Zander
it was like one of my very early wins, like someone wants to own what I’m doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well that’s cool.

Lauren Zander
Yes, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m imagining it’s a whole course, so there’s a lot behind it, but could you give us a little bit of sort of the high points for the foundational elements. I’ve got a sheet of paper with everything I want out of life. If I’m designing my life, I imagine that’s a step in it. What else do I do there?

Lauren Zander
Basically I am changing the framework of how to think about life and answer questions or figure out your answers, what you really want in your life, along with a variety of other things. It’s not just that.

The first section of the homework and then … a whole philosophy off of each of the three main sections is I break life out into 12 different areas and I teach you and tell you to write a dream in each of the 12. MIT was hysterical because they’re like, “I never thought of these other areas of life. There’s only three in my life.” It was like-

Pete Mockaitis
There’s research and-

Lauren Zander
Right. They eat, they get laid, and they work, and they have a family. That was kind of it. That was it.

The concept that you should have a vision and an understanding of your whole life or desires for your whole life through … area of your life, like if you haven’t sat down and really thought about it and really figured out what you want, how are you at all anywhere near getting it? I can’t even coach you until you really start to deal with what you want.

What I have people do is I have them rate their life against that dream currently. Then explain why they gave it that rating. Then explain what they think is between them and fulfilling on that dream like it was a nine or a ten.

it’s profound because I lay it out that way, a person then is writing all their drama out of their head, like, “I can’t have it because,” “This has to happen first,” all of their logic, … their drama, all the stories that they tell themselves, I swear to bejesus ends a brilliant laid out like a map you can fix.

That’s just the first section. The second section – do you want to hear all these?

Pete Mockaitis
No, no, that’s good. That’s good. The 12 areas are self, body, love, spirituality, career, money, time, home, family, friends, fun and adventure, and community contribution.

Lauren Zander
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that feels pretty thorough in terms of covering the gamut of life. You map it out. You get a score and then what comes next?

Lauren Zander
There’s two more sections to just kind of pull up everything. But if you were just working on that section, the next thing you would do is I would teach you some concepts, like some important concepts.

One, most people never write good dreams. Most dreams are, “I finally meet a man I can trust.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Lauren Zander
You can hear in every sentence their cavities.

Pete Mockaitis
Cavities.

Lauren Zander
I’ll do a little sidebar. When I explain what I do for a living in a funny, kind of my sort of way, I say, “Oh, I’m a spiritual accountant. I’m coming to do your ….” After I’m a spiritual accountant, I’m then a spiritual lawyer. I will put you in the right contracts so that you really fulfill on the life you want.

Then from time to time I need to be a spiritual dentist. You … cavities. Or “Oh my God, you need a root canal on that thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
And nobody’s flossing.

Lauren Zander
No, everyone’s just building up more of whatever is the same, that they do that in that area. Other areas, great. Then other areas not so great.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
You dream and you dream well.

Lauren Zander
You dream, yes and you rate yourself. Then you start to say everything that you think is between you and your success. What you will find riddled in all of your language are theories that you have, “I can’t have this until I have that.” “I can’t-“ “ the reason the relationship I have with my father is this way is because-“ All of the problems are laid out really well there.

Then … a whole bunch of process work to do, step-by-step on how to figure out where you’re either being … about something, where you’re absolutely a coward. You made it up in your head. You’re scared of them. You won’t tell them the truth, blah, blah. There’s a reason that it is that way and it’s fear-based.

Especially when I was teaching at MIT, everyone … up to their …. Everyone was – they were so behind. They didn’t know what – there were people that were too scared to have any conversations … truth about what was going on.

Fear and then you live in your head and then you turn the other person into a bully. That’s a lot of what’s happening in people’s – there’s a chicken running loose.

The other one is a brat. You think you know yourself and you can’t top eating junk food at night. You can’t go to bed early or you can’t go to the gym. All of the ways you go, you can’t. You’ve always been this way. You’ve never been good at. That pretty much is the voice of the brat in your head.

If I made you stop, which I do in the book or in the method, and actually write down your inner dialogue and really start to hear it like it’s not you, it’s the voice in your head, it’s the brat, it’s the chicken, you start to separate from your patterns.

You start to hear them and see them and see how you fall for them and see how they get you a cookie and … bed, and don’t go for that job or don’t come home and really meditate. This is all how you break into your mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Then your book, Maybe It’s You, you are sort of unpacking this. Tell us what’s behind the title here.

Lauren Zander
What happened is … client is every time I had a revelation right before I had the revelation, I had … point happen, “Maybe it’s me.”

The tagline ‘Maybe It’s Me’ changes everything. It changed everything for me. It’s been my joke for when something good happens that I take credit for, “Maybe it’s me,” or when something terrible is happening, “Maybe it’s me.” Then the joke is, “Maybe.” Then, “It’s me.” Then from that moment forward you can do something about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’m with you. I’d love to dig in precisely in the zone of career and work. What do you think are some of the tools or takeaways from the book that are most helpful and applicable for folks who want to be awesome at their jobs?

Lauren Zander
I do it an incredible amount in my career in executive coaching and being in company, so I know plenty, but what I – most people will – so many people are … difficult conversations.

They don’t know how to frame them, they don’t know how to address upsets, they don’t know how to really move through a conversation in a way that doesn’t scare the poopy out of them, so they avoid doing it, like whoever is above them or even being able to have a difficult conversation with someone you’re managing.

If you go where’s my secret sauce in the book for people in corporations or in a business setting, you really need to figure out how to step-by-step go through having very difficult conversations. I show examples. I think that’s incredibly helpful because people get stuck in their lives and their relationships and they really think they just … do workarounds.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
“I’ll just get over that.” “I just won’t talk to them about that.” “I just can’t-“ “Oh I have this-“

Pete Mockaitis
“I’ll just leave this job.”

Lauren Zander
“Or I’ll-“ yes … the job. No one bets on – no one understands that having a great conversation is really like changes the odds of your doomed theory. It instantly goes – I can convince a person it’s 50/50, it could go either way. They were going it was 100% a disaster. Just even recognizing that it goes to 50/50.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
Then you start to think about how important are you? What is really the matter? What are you trying to fix? Is this in the best interest of the business? Is anyone …. that’s all the chicken, all the reasons we won’t have a conversation because we think we know what the other person’s going to do or say.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. That’s great. Bumping your odds up from, “I’m certain this will be terrible,” to “Eh, flip a coin. It might be terrible.” That’s a huge upgrade right there in moments.

Lauren Zander
Right. Then starting to build the courage to have any conversation is leadership, where you’re – then if you see how I teach you how to frame it. You don’t come accusing. You come in saying what your thoughts are and where you’re stuck.

It’s so easy to change a dynamic and leave someone else happy to tell you what they think versus mortified you said that. There’s dynamics as you … in the book, you’ll  read all the real conversations, scary ones, that I made people have. They really had them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Let’s talk about the framing and the step-by-step for how one engages in this and builds the courage/capacity to do it repeatedly.

Lauren Zander
Yes. So what happens is there’s usually true skinny, like

“I don’t want to – I don’t want to tell my boss that when he’s late for these things and then he still expects me to hand them in on time it really screws me up. He never apologizes. He never says anything about it. He doesn’t even seem like he notices and then I have to work on the weekend. He’s done this to me three times. He never says thank you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
Okay. That’s a good one. The issue … “I don’t feel acknowledged or appreciated and he takes advantage of my time and doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.” Okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Lauren Zander
Okay, that’s-

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. It’s funny, the fear always … – well, not always, it’s already popping up.

I imagine myself in that scenario, experiencing that, imagining the prospect of having this conversation and then all the terrible ways it can go in terms of, “Hey Pete, it’s called work for a reason. Everyone’s working hard. Sometimes there are things outside our control. I need you to put on your big boy pants and deal with it and be a team player here.”

Lauren Zander
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Sort of like, “I will be changing nothing. Thank you very much.”

Lauren Zander
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Is sort of what I initially fear is going to be how it’s received on the other side.

Lauren Zander
Yes, everyone thinks – one of the things I have people really confront in the book is how much they’re running a puppet show, where you’re in your head, you’re running conversations and you don’t even realize you’re answering their answers and then you keep strategizing with as like – and you never understand that that’s insane.

That’s actually not true. It’s Barbies. You’re playing Barbies in your head and you think you know other people. How could you possibly have a real experience with that person if you really are always running a Barbie relationship with them in your head? You leave them and you start quarterbacking. You call your two friends. You have a discussion about … thought the discussion was.

We are running puppet shows. It’s so much better to actually have a real relationship with someone, where you are authentic and actually share what’s going on in that head of yours.

As long as you’re not combative and act accusatory, where it puts the other person on defense, you’d be amazed that that’s the beginning of actually … personalities, different needs, different work relationships. Most people really want good working relationships.

Or to go, “That’s not happening. Let’s create a workaround. I am that person. You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s going to be that way. Okay, what do you need then?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah.

Lauren Zander
Everything can get resolved because everybody’s already living with the worst case scenario. It’s only getting better from here.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nice. There you go.

Lauren Zander
Right. That’s the ultimate truth is it’s only going to get better. Okay, what this – what I would have this person do is figure out that.
“I have to talk about something. I – I’m scared to tell you.” You admit your feelings. You would admit – like, “I’m scared to tell you and I really want this to go well. I just wanted to say that. I’m a little nervous to tell you this.

Okay, and the reason I’m nervous is because I’ve been a bit upset about something and I haven’t mentioned it to you. One, I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up when it first happened, so you didn’t have a chance at all to fix it with me and/or to even know. I’m really telling on myself that I was … about something and it’s a few happened a few times and now I’m having the courage to come clean.”

Pete Mockaitis
What’s really cool about that is that already if I’m on the receiving end of that I’m like, “Uh oh, what have I done. I really did something terrible.” and there’s suspense, so then when you release it, it’s like, “Oh, okay, well we can work with that.”

Lauren Zander
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not so terrifying.

Lauren Zander
Yes and you also want to be a good guy, like I set you up to want to take care of me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Lauren Zander
See that. Like oh – I’m already calling myself a jerk, not you, but me. “I didn’t tell you, so you couldn’t have done anything about it. I should have said something.” The issue is not that it happened. It’s that I didn’t say something or address it when it happened and I’m putting all responsibility on me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like it.

Lauren Zander
Then the next part is, “So there’s this thing that’s happened a couple times, which is you know that report I own on Mondays? It’s due on Thursdays and you get it to me usually around 3:30 on Friday so that I don’t get to work on it until the weekend or – so it ends up putting me – because I totally want to hand it into you at 9 AM on Mondays, but because you get it to me late, it’s messing my time up.

I never said anything. I just want … you happy and I still want to keep you happy. … solutions if you want.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Lauren Zander
“Here’s the thing, if you want to hand it – if you’re giving it to me on 3:30 on Friday, I would like to be able to get it to you by 1:00 on Monday or 4 o’clock on Monday,” whatever is actually the right answer, whatever based on that.

“… we switch the timeline? Or if you want it on that time can I get it no later than 3. I need it on Thursday. How can I help you get …? What should we do? This is everything I haven’t been saying. This is why I haven’t said it, but I have to do something about it, so what do you think?” Then just flip the ball back to the boss and the boss will fix it and take care of you and is set up to take care of you.

Every conversations – there’s … what you need to take …, like what could I have done differently. I’m not a victim of this person. I’m having a full-blown relationship with them. I can do anything in this relationship. There’s no power where I’m not allowed to talk or ask or say something or bring up a deadline or wonder about something.

People are really cowards when it comes to power. Then they’ll have that one example where someone yelled at them or that someone got mad. Then they’ll use that to always remind them … the full truth.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Lauren Zander
There’s a lot of ways to learn how to communicate better that we teach. It’s … awesome. It’s a Wild West.

Pete Mockaitis
If you do get the worst case scenario, what then?

Lauren Zander
You eat crow. You take it. If the worst case scenario is, “I cannot believe you’re coming in here and discussing what you do on the weekend and what it takes for you to get your job done. You’re not going to talk to me about when I get you that report. Are you kidding? You’ll do your job and you’ll have it to me Monday at 9. I don’t want to hear about this again.”

“Okay. All right. That will never happen again. I got it. I am to work and whenever you … to me, I will get it done. I’m sorry if this offended you. It seems like I offended you in some way. I got it. Thank you.” You always address if someone’s angry or off too. It – not to go, “Are you … at me?” Like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess this upset you.”

That you’re like – you just always take – you absorb what’s going on in the room. You always acknowledge it. “Is somebody unhappy in here?” When you call out the space, the space can shift. All of these things are dynamics amongst people, learning how to interact better with understanding what’s going on and how to use the truth and your personality well.

Pete Mockaitis
With that understanding, you’re now actually in a better place even though you may feel like, “Uh oh, I’ve lost some status or respect,” or whatever with the boss. You’re in a better place because you now have some wisdom.

It’s like, “Okay, well this is where it stands. Now I can make an informed decision in terms of all right, weekends. Just how critical are they to me and is this the right role for me – it’s pretty clearly defined what this expectation is and now I’m going to think through if that’s optimal and workable for me given all my options.”

Lauren Zander
Exactly, what a person should always be doing. Then whatever values you have about work. It has to be fun. It has to give me my lifestyle. People need to also figure out their serious criteria for an experience at work just like you would want in your love life. People are always compromising in ways that are really soul crushing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lauren Zander
Soul crushing and then they don’t believe they can change, like really make a plan and get out. That’s another thing … famous for is it helps you make a real plan, so you’re designing your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, okay. In your book you had a few other concepts that were intriguing. Can you share with us, what do you mean by our emotional DNA?

Lauren Zander
I study lineage. In science they’ve been calling it epigenetics. The way I make you get it is you don’t just have your father’s blue eyes; you have his wandering blue eyes, so your father was a cheater of some sort.

Your emotional DNA is just as built in as your physical DNA, which is a radical thing to – because we would … to go, “Oh, my dad was an addict. No wonder I have an addict tendency.” It kind of just explains some things.

Genetics explain physical. The only emotional … they’re starting – they do go … bipolar, maybe that’s why you are.

But the world of all – that’s the only places they look, like mental illness a little. But what if all of your behaviors are … not just – they’re genetically and behaviorally impacting you because of how you were raised and because of your parents and because of your lineage and because of the two divorces your mom had and because of your father’s money issues.

The more you understand your parents, the more you understand the lineage, the depth and the culture, like male/female, all those dynamics are … shaping you. What happens in the method is you literally start … your parents and see yourself through … of all … parents …. Does that make ….

Pete Mockaitis
Mm hm. Got you.

Lauren Zander
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
So knowing that, what do you do?

Lauren Zander
When you figure out, so for example, my father was a – he still is a lawyer. But he’s a high-powered, … law firm, 30-year-old running a big law firm in Manhattan kind of a guy. Really young …. I think I sound like my father.

Then if you go in a little deeper, my father could be incredibly stubborn because … his better lines. Then you get a kiddo at the end. One of my … my way, my way …. I’m not allowed to do that. … married to that person? Do you want to be married to that person? My husband does not.

For example, …. I have promises about – that I’m just not allowed to do that at all. I could – I teach promise … very funny consequences around my whole family about rules I need so that I’m not bossy mommy at all. I’m not.

It’s so much fun when we don’t want to be that trait, like your father’s or your mother’s or any of those things, you can liberate yourself by knowing it or making fun of it. A sense of humor is … and coming up with a promise that really does counteract it.

Pete Mockaitis
You talk a lot about keeping promises to yourself. What are some of the best practices to do that with great consistency?

Lauren Zander
People can keep … to people much easier because … in it if you don’t … promise, the authority inherent in the relationship. But when it comes to keeping promises … self, we suck because … blew off the gym, the … it just doesn’t influence you the same way. … picking up … as you would blow off going to the gym.

Pete Mockaitis
Now Lauren, in the book you also mention how we often don’t keep our promises to ourselves. How does that work and how can we do it better?

Lauren Zander
We’re good at keeping promises to others or much better usually. Then the places where you’re having any difficulty, you’re not great. Most people are not good at keeping promises to themselves. For a variety of reasons.

But so you want to break out and what you’re really developing is what I call personal integrity, an ability to keep a promise to yourself that you want to keep. But if you’re already not keeping it that’s hard to keep, you will need, what I put right in, is a promise plus a consequence and not in your little head. It has to be public, someone knows about it, so you even have a buddy or someone’s holding you accountable.

How this works, for example, is I wanted to take on a meditation practice. There is no way I was going to – unless I had a consequence, me meditating twice a day was just never going to happen. It almost was comical.

But the minute I go – before I get my coffee in the morning, I have to meditate and before I get any screens at night, I have to meditate, or no screens or no coffee. Very simple. Will I die if I don’t get coffee? I might get a headache, but I will not die. Will I die if I don’t get screens at night? Not even a little.

A consequence is actually going after one of your vices. You’re – it’s literally making your dark work for good. Then if I really want to keep a promise, I need a consequence. I need a timeline and I need someone who benefits, like will follow up with me and make sure I’m really keeping my promise.

I owe them money. I always do money. I never like to part with 20 bucks to someone, so if I want to make sure I do something, I’m like I’ll give you 20 bucks if I don’t go by Tuesday because I – I’m not taking my shoes to get fixed except I really want my shoes fixed. But I will blow that off. I’ll closer throw out the shoes than just go take them and get them fixed. I need promises from my lazy behaviors.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That seems like a simple way to do it. Cool.

Lauren Zander
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Furthermore, you say that we lie to ourselves or to others in many different shades even if we don’t think we do. How does that work?

Lauren Zander
One of the most important things that happens throughout the homework through the method is really sorting out how we lie, ways we lie, why we lie, what we’re lying about, who we’re lying to, why we’re lying to them, why we think we have to keep lying. Then of course, do you think other people are always telling you the truth.

If you start to go deeply into trusting people and being honest and what that gets you, what happens is that people think it’s very scary territory because the truth can be ugly, yours or theirs. Makes sense?

Starting to face the people and types and brands of how you lie, and why you lie, and what that’s costing you because most people don’t really understand what it’s costing them. Science even backs how much it’s costing people …, happiness, it creates …, it makes health issues. It’s so serious to lie and to live an imposter syndrome in your own life with your kids, with your own husband, with your own job.

There’s seven different ways we lie that I pull out and make people do lists on.

One of the most popular one, what’s the worst one no one wants to deal with? Is they explain they’re bad at confrontation. “I’m very bad at confrontation. I really am just this person who needs to keep everybody happy. I’m a people pleaser. I know that’s my problem. I’m a people pleaser.”

I go, “Oh people pleaser, you. You understand what a people pleaser sounds like to me?” “What?” “A really serious liar.” If you’re keeping everybody happy, that doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth, does it? Everything you’re not allowed to say to someone because you’re pleasing them and want to avoid confrontation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, what you’re saying that withholding itself is a form of dishonesty.

Lauren Zander
Yeah, I make a whole case for all different types of lying. Withholding information that someone thinks they should know, but I didn’t figure out to ask, does that mean you’re not lying?

If I go, “Oh, I hope you had a great day at work,” and you didn’t really go to work and I just walked out of the room, I didn’t say …. I just was like you didn’t bring it up again. I never said no. But that would be weird because it’s misrepresenting it. You know that the person thinks you went to work, but you’re not telling, but that’s – I explain how all these ways are – these are ways to lie.

It’s really important to understand because that’s how – remember that puppet show I was talking about? This is how the puppets work. This is how you never be authentic in your life, never find your voice, never deal with yourself, never get relationships to work.

Leave, leave. This will have you never leave and stay really sedated in your happiness, like, “Oh I accepted this.” You call it acceptance, but it’s not acceptance. It’s resignation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got it.

Lauren Zander
Charming, right?

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

Lauren Zander
My method is not for the light-hearted, for someone who wants to not go deep. This goes deep and it means to go deep. I keep you laughing and doing very scary things that will change your life forever and they don’t revert, if you actually learn them.

When you need it, it’s right there. Hard core.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Good to know. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Lauren Zander
One of my favorite quotes is “You’re never too old to have a good childhood.” Tom Robbins.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

Lauren Zander
Yeah.

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

Lauren Zander
The epigenetics one is my favorite, all about how – it’s a whole story on – it’s too long – on the rats. There’s a whole rat story of – around that prove epigenetics in the – right in the babies, next generation, right there, they can prove it exists and that evolution is happening right like that. It’s profound.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite book?

Lauren Zander
I would say Tom Robbins wins, which it’s Still Life with Woodpecker.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Lauren Zander
A favorite tool. I am a painter. I make dots actually. I dot and I have this perfect little – I have all different sizes, but a dotter. That’s my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite habit?

Lauren Zander
Painting.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect or resonate with folks when you’re coaching or speaking?

Lauren Zander
That they’ve never taken over managing their mind. That those thoughts in there – that whatever that mind of yours is doing, you just don’t leave things to just see how they grow. You save your legs.

If you edit things, you’re like – the amount of no work people are doing on the inside of that mind of theirs, you’ve got to break in. It’s so easy to get a person to go, “I have no idea what my mind is really, really doing for a living. I know I’m its bitch, but boy oh boy, it would be nice to not be.”

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

Lauren Zander
To my website, the Handel Group. Maybe It’s You, you can find anywhere, Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I’m sure they would appreciate you buy a copy.

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

Lauren Zander
I dare you to have one difficult conversation and figure out how to be a leader about that. One day or one conversation, one thing you’re avoiding, that you’re upset about that you should fix and really come clean and clear it up with the person. One – come on you. The odds that you don’t have one are impossible. You do. Unless you work alone and then you should do it with yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Lauren, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for sharing the goods. I wish you lots of luck with the book and all you’re up to here.

Lauren Zander
Thank you. Thank you for everything you’re doing. I really, really, really appreciate the network and team that’s forming of people really supporting each other and being great.

Jul 20
0

323: The Surprising Power of Seeing People as People with Kimberly White

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Kimberly White says: "Ordinary people have so much capacity and so much greatness inside them."

Kimberly White breaks down why seeing people as people dramatically increases productivity at work and in life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What you miss when you see people as objects
  2. How seeing people as people turbocharges problem-solving
  3. Three ways to change the way you perceive people

About Kimberly

Kimberly White is the perpetually amused mother of some very theatrical children, and the lucky wife of the funniest person she’s ever known. Her nine months of research for The Shift included dozens of hours working alongside nursing home employees in offices, showers, vans, patient rooms, kitchens, and one very creepy basement.

Kimberly earned a degree in philosophy, studying under C. Terry Warner and serving as his longtime research assistant. She was editor of her department’s undergraduate philosophy journal and copy editor for Epoche: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. She has also worked for the Arbinger Institute as a group instructor and as a first-draft editor of Leadership and Self-Deception.

Kimberly’s family recently moved from Harlem to the village of Pawnee, Illinois, where they have gloried in mid-western sunsets and accumulated pets at an alarming rate.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Kimberly White Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Kimberly, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Kimberly White
Thank you Pete. I am so glad to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well I think this is going to be a fascinating conversation on all sorts of levels. But first and foremost, I want to hear about your synesthesia. My wife also has it. Tell me how that works for you.

Kimberly White
For me it means that numbers and letters of the alphabet have colors in my mind. It’s consistent over time. But I also have concepts, so like days of the week and places that I’m familiar with and certain holidays appear in my mind in color and also located in space around me that they always appear whenever I think about the concept or the letter or the number. It’s kind of fun. It’s kind of interesting.

The only thing about it that’s proven to be a drawback in my life is that somehow I don’t know how these things develop, but I must have been young when I learned about east and west because the color I have in my head for west is the same color I have in my head for right, as in the right side of my body.

When I’m trying to get directions and people talking about east and west, I always confuse them because the color for west is the same as the color for right, when of course, when you’re reading a map that should be on the left. But I’ve learned that if I’m getting east and west directions, I have to stop and write it down because my brain is going to confuse that. There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fascinating. With my wife, numbers seem to have a color and a gender to them.

Kimberly White
I’ve heard of that.

Pete Mockaitis
As a result, they’re so much more meaningful to her and she’s able to memorize numbers rapidly, whereas I rely on this old school technique of turning each of the numbers into a letter, turn those letters into a word, link those words. I’m thinking hard for like five minutes to memorize a sequence and she just has it in less than one minute.

Kimberly White
Yeah, because it brings in more of the brain. Yeah, mine has not really proven to be helpful, just interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s also interesting to me is you recently made a move to central Illinois, right?

Kimberly White
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s Pawnee, Illinois, not to be confused with Pawnee, Indiana, the fictitious home of Leslie Knope in Parks and Rec.

Kimberly White
No and that’s what everybody asks me. All I can say is a) I wish and b) my Pawnee is much, much smaller.

Now, what’s crazy is we moved here from Manhattan.

Pete Mockaitis
That is crazy.

Kimberly White
We actually lived in Harlem. It was the biggest city. It’s all very cosmopolitan. And everybody’s a doctor or an artist or an opera singer. Everybody has tiny, little tiny places to live, but sort of big jobs and big dreams. We moved out here to farm country and it’s like being in a different country, but it’s great. It’s a great different country. We’ve been very, very happy here.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. The motivation for the move was just to have just less distraction and to be able to do more writing?

Kimberly White
Partially that and the money.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah.

Kimberly White
I love New York, but it is so expensive to live there. Rents just go up and up and up. We just we got priced out.

Pete Mockaitis
I think beyond just the sheer income versus outgo, it would just irritate me. Writing checks that large ore paying this much for a drink or for milk or whatever you’re buying, like, “This is ridiculous,” grumble, grumble.

Kimberly White
It’s really true. I would be happy – if I saw a gallon of milk for five dollars, I’d say, “Hurray, it’s only five dollars.” This was two years ago. I’m sure milk is seven dollars now. It really did wear on you after a while, but there were lots of great things about the city too. Wonderful people.

New Yorkers get a really bad rap. It’s mostly deserved, but there are really, really good things about New Yorkers. They’re very loyal.

I’m always telling people who wanted to go visit, they always want advice from somebody who’s lived there, I tell them, “Do not be afraid to ask somebody on the street for directions. New Yorkers are really friendly that way. But don’t stop in the middle of the street and block them from walking. Then they’ll be really mad.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh right, walking too slow. That’s the cardinal sin.

Kimberly White
Don’t walk too slow. Don’t do that. Just don’t. Don’t do it. Don’t stop at the top of the subway stairs. Don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy. Well, that’s a lot of fun. That’s the backdrop.

Kimberly White
There we are.

Pete Mockaitis
Then I’m going to get some more backdrop. You have a good bit of experience collaborating with the Arbinger Institute. Can you orient those who are not yet familiar? What’s this organization all about?

Kimberly White
The Arbinger Institute is a management consulting company. They’re a philosophy. They’re management consulting approach is based on the work of a philosopher named Terry Warner, who founded the company decades ago before I was involved with them.

Their approach is to teach leaders and managers how to see the people that they’re responsible for, and the people that they work with, and the people that report to them as real people not just as sort of cogs in the corporate machine.

They have found over the years that you can do a lot to improve productivity and avoid infighting and the sort of battles that develop between different departments and so on just by taking this approach.
I worked with them in college. They have a very popular book called Leadership and Self-Deception that was written about that time. I was involved. I didn’t write the book but I looked at the first draft, edited it. I was involved with the first couple of drafts of that book. It’s still worth reading today. Your listeners should check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh absolutely. It is worth reading. I heard several guests cite this as one of their top, top books. It’s like; I’ve got to check this thing out. I actually listened to the audio version. I still hear that guy’s voice in my head sometimes, like, “You’re in the box. … going to get out of the box.”

Kimberly White
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s really powerful stuff. I was intrigued just because it’s one of the few books that I know of that doesn’t have an author listed as the person, but it’s like the entire organization.

I always try to figure out this is a great book. Who should I get to talk about it on the show? Well, it’s like I don’t know because there’s not an author I can snag. You’re sort of like behind the veil of mystery as an editor.

Kimberly White
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s something special.

Kimberly White
I know. Yes. It’s very interesting. They did that on purpose. They were very considered about that. They have a few other books out now. Usually they are primarily written by one person in the company, but they all sort of collaborate together and work on it together.

They made the decision – and this is a very Arbinger thing to do. They made the decision to have all of their books be authored by the Institute and not by the individuals so that the credit for the ideas would be shared. There wouldn’t be one person, for example, who’s doing all the podcasts. That was their point.

You’ll notice in my book that I’ve written we had the same sort of issue. It’s primarily a profile of one company and they didn’t want their name to be primary. They wanted the stories and the insights to be sort of more universal. More important, they didn’t want to feel uncomfortable offering the book to their competitors and other people in the same industry. They just wanted the ideas to stand for themselves.

That’s why there’s this veil of mystery, as you call it, is to keep it even and to keep the focus on the ideas and the work and to make it as accessible for any one person as for anybody else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool and that’s interesting. It just really feels like it’s really based upon true values. I think it just makes it, well, I guess from a marketing perspective, all the more intriguing. It’s like I’ve got to see what this is about.

Kimberly White
You can tell that they’re really living what they preach. They have the kind of collaborative relationship that they teach other people how to have.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. You’re telling me that the name of the organization is not the real name of the organization?

Kimberly White
It is not. That just stands for Healthcare Group.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. The mystery continues. Cool.

Kimberly White
Yeah, such a mystery.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s sort of the backstory. Then can you orient us a little bit. We talked about the main principle or concept is people as people. Can you give us a little bit more background on just sort of the conceptual piece and then I want to hear how it came alive for HG. I said the box a couple of times, could you maybe unpack just a couple of those foundational concepts?

Kimberly White
Yeah, let’s clarify all of those. Especially because the subtitle of my book is How Seeing People as People Changes Everything. The question I get all the time is how else am I going to see them. Obviously they’re people. It does bear talking about.

The point isn’t that Arbinger or I, anybody thinks that anyone really doesn’t know that people are people and thinks of them as subhuman or anything like that. That’s not what we’re talking about.

But the point is this, when I am focused and kind of obsessed with my own interests and my goals and the things I’m trying to accomplish and my fears and my dreams, when that’s the only thing that I’m caring about and thinking about, then the people around me only enter my thoughts in so far as they have an impact on the things I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t think about them beyond that.

If I’m trying to get a promotion at work, then my coworkers, I only even see them as far as they impact that. She might be a competitor, someone else who’s trying to get that promotion. That’s all I see. This is a person I’m competing with. How do I drag her down? How do I make myself look good in comparison to her?

He might not be in the running for the promotion. He kind of likes me and maybe he’ll say something good about me to the higher ups, so I only see him in so far as I can use him for that purpose. Now, the reason we say that seeing people like that is like seeing them as objects is because it reduces them to functional.

Pete Mockaitis
Only if you’re there.

Kimberly White
Yeah. Objects, they come from the factory. They’re supposed to perform something. If I’ve got a pen, it came from the factory. It only exists for me to be able to write with it. If I can write with it, then I’m happy with it. If my friend at work will praise me to the higher ups, then I’m happy with him. I don’t think any further about it.

If my pen is broken, then I’m mad and I’m frustrated and maybe I’ll throw it away. I might lick it, shake it, whatever, because it’s just an object. What I don’t do with a pen is think “I wonder what happened to make the pen feel bad. I wonder if I can talk it into providing-“ no, because it’s not a person. It doesn’t have feelings. It doesn’t have thoughts. It’s just an object.

But I find myself treating other people that way too because-

Pete Mockaitis
You lick them. You shake them.

Kimberly White
Yeah, you lick them, you shake them, try to get them to do it and see how – and if they don’t do what I want, then I’m just mad and I get rid of them.

But the person who’s a competitor for the promotion for me in the office, that is not why she exists. She doesn’t exist to compete with me. She has her own life. She grew up somewhere. She has perspective. She has a culture she came from. She had hurts when she was young and triumphs and all of these things have made her the person she is. She has her own goals and her own reasons.

There are just thousands of things inside her mind and in her life having her act the way she does and bringing her to this point. But when I’m only thinking about myself, I don’t see any of that in her. All I see is “I want a promotion, she might get in my way,” just like she was a pen that wasn’t producing ink.

When we see people as objects like that, the problem is obviously, that’s not fair to her. She doesn’t exist for me. He doesn’t exist for me. It’s not fair to people. They don’t like that feeling of being seen like an object, but it’s also false. When I see somebody, just a thin sliver of what they’re … me and that’s all I care about, then I’m missing a lot.

She might have a very good reason for wanting this promotion. She might … fit for the promotion than I am or maybe not, but I don’t know. As long as all I can see is that she’s a competitor, like an object competitor, I can’t see anything else and there are bound to be important things that I’m missing.

That’s why in the Arbinger materials, you’ll find them talking about being in the box because when we see other people as though they were just objects, our perspective is so limited that it’s like being locked in a box where we can only see a few things. I can only see the stuff that matters to my goals. I can’t see anything else. It’s a way of being blinkered.

In my book I talk about it as being kind of blind because we miss so many important and crucial things and it leaves us unable to solve problems and build relationships when we’re seeing others in that shallow object-like way.

Pete Mockaitis
When you talk about being blinkered and blind, what this is reminding me of is some study that I think it looked at brain scans associated with people who are looking at pornography.

What was sort of troubling there is that sort of the same parts of the brain associated with using an object or tool like a hammer or a saw or something were being activated and lit up sort of in that context when they were looking at images of people, which is really spooky that there’s some sort of physical or biochemical stuff happening just inside of us that’s there.

Blindness really does seem like an apt terminology because it’s kind of like a physical dysfunction or disability.

Kimberly White
Yes, there’s just so much we miss. Nobody has ever studied the Arbinger term specifically, but they have done studies and they’ve shown similar things when you’re part of an in group and there’s an out group that you have a conflict with, like racial groups or gang members from different affiliations that you find, again, the same thing.

You find different regions of the brain activated for the people that you’re seeing as objects and as enemies than for the ones that are part of your in group and that you care about.

Like I said, this specifically hasn’t been studied, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it would show up in a brain scan because we do, we get so blinded and so blinkered when we are self-absorbed and not seeing the people around us as people.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m right with you there that it doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to live and experience collaboration and interaction with people. But if that were enough for the hardcore achievers, what are some of the results or performance impacts associated with making this mental shift?

Kimberly White
Oh gosh, it’s so crazy because I think it’s easy to hear something like this and think, “Hm, yeah, but having to get to know people, that takes time and I’ve got to earn money and I’ve got a deadline,” as though seeing people as people is going to take more time and it yields uncertain benefits.

But it is absolutely the opposite. I have seen so many cases where seeing people as objects has led to all kinds of conflict and wasted time. In my book, it’s primarily focused on the healthcare industry.

One thing that’s very, very common in health care environments is the management – it being responsible management – will sort of look at their budget and all the things that are going in and out and notice that they spent a lot on supplies, gloves and adult briefs, and wipes and things like that and will say, “Hey, I think we’re using too many. Let’s try to restrict this a little bit and try to save money on our supplies.”

The problem is that the nurses and the nursing assistants who have to deal with the patients face-to-face, one-on-one, that’s a horrifying idea to them because what are they going to do if somebody needs  a change or they need their wound looked at or they need to be rolled over and the nurse has run out of gloves. You can’t even touch a patient without gloves. There’s so many things they wouldn’t be able to do.

The nurses become panicked and the first thing they do – and this is so common – they’ll sort of sneak the supplies out of the closet and go hide them around the patient rooms. They’ll hide them in places so that each individual nurse knows that she has enough supplies for her patients. But they all do this because they’ve all been told we’re cutting back on supplies.

Then management comes and they look at it and they go, “Wait, we’re still overusing our supplies,” and they yell at the nurses and they give them lectures. They have a big in service meeting to talk about how important it is. The nurses go, “Oh my gosh,” and they hide more stuff because they’re afraid of losing their supplies and not being able to care for their patients.

This happens so frequently and things like this happen in every business as departments feud for resources and as reports try to sneak things from their boss if they feel like budgets are being constrained.

This problem only arises because the management isn’t trusting the nurses to be responsible with the supplies and the nurses aren’t trusting the management to purchase the amount of supplies they truly need, so they’re back and forth and everybody is upset and angry.

You end up spending a lot of time, and meetings, and a lot of emotional energy trying to solve this supply problem that should be going toward your actual product, which is taking care of the patients, taking care of their rooms.

When you get leaders who are willing to back out of that conflict and say, “We’re on the same side here. Let’s work together to talk about things where we can save money. How many supplies do you realistically need? I’ll make sure you have them,” then you don’t have those problems. That hording issue completely disappears when the people trust each other.

Now, no nurse, no janitor, nobody who’s on the housekeeping staff, none of these people are going to trust leadership that doesn’t value them. If I know that my boss basically just sees me as an object, I am not going to trust him. I’m not going to trust her. I’m going to feel like those nurses and I’m going to feel like I need to hoard my resources and hoard my stuff.

When you can really see people as people as a leader, you get so much more productivity, so much more cooperation, so much more openness from the people that you’re working with because people can tell that the difference. They know. They know when you’re seeing them as an object. They know when you don’t matter to them.

You can save all kinds of energy and money, frankly, because you don’t need to spend that much on supplies if everybody is being honest about where they’re going.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. You talked about resources in different environments. I’m aware of an employee who it’s kind of challenging to type all day at a laptop, so this person wants to use speech software.

They have speech software, but the laptop is underpowered in terms of RAM or hard drive space or whatever is necessary to run the thing and making the request to get the computer you need to do the work is just nightmarish in terms of the policies and the standards.

Kimberly White
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
You can have me operating at sort of half-power, which is going to amount to 30 – 40 – 50 K a year of lost productivity.

Kimberly White
Of loss, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Or you can pay 500 bucks to get me a RAM and a hard drive update and I’ll be a happy camper.

Kimberly White
Right. I’ll be happy. I’ll be pleased. I’ll get my work done instead of gripping about my computer. I think so many, especially business leaders and managers, underestimate how much time is lost in complaining and in gripping and in just sort of being unhappy.

Here’s a little experiment for you. If you think about somebody that you don’t like, somebody that’s irritating and drives you crazy. Just think about how much time you’ve spent in your life just basically sitting and thinking how annoying that person is or complaining to somebody else about how annoying they are. Calling your mom, “Oh, did I tell you what so and so did today.”

We actually spend a lot of time on that and not nearly as much when we trust and value people. That doesn’t take away from our work. We don’t devote the same kind of energy to it. We tend to devote that kind of energy into working together.

I was in a building – this is in my book too – where I met two nurses. They’re both male. They were just so happy in their job. They were so happy where they worked. They were so happy with the way they were treated by management and they created this entire environment where all of the employees were supportive and helpful.

One of these guys actually had a second job in another facility that actually paid him more per hour, but he wouldn’t give up this job because it was so pleasant. He enjoyed it so much. Talk about productivity increase, talk about engagement, talk about motivation.

We spend so much time and energy trying to get employees to feel engaged, to be motivated, to be committed, to reduce turnover, all of these things. People will stay where they’re happy, where they feel valued, and where they know their feelings and their hopes, and their dreams, and their perspective matter, especially when they feel like they matter to the management.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. I’m thinking of another instance in which an employee shared all sorts of input on sort of the process and the use of contractors and how they could do a better job executing a certain area of work.

Then one or two days later, they started up doing the exact same old process with the exact same problematic contractors, threw this person into a meeting and is absorbing this with not a word of acknowledgement about the exchange.

Like, “Hey, I know what you said about the contractors and we’re really working on that, but it’s … right now, so we’re going to have to go with who we’ve got because we can’t get someone else quick enough,” just 20 seconds.

Kimberly White
That’s all it would take.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Hey, I heard you.”

Kimberly White
Right. But here’s the thing and here’s why the Arbinger approach and the stuff I talk about in my book I think are so important, it’s because that kind of thing, just being willing to take the time to explain what’s going on kind of arises naturally when you really see the people around you as people.

When you care about your coworkers, when you care about their feelings, you would always make those clarifications. You would never just ignore them. That’s how we treat the people that we care about. That’s how we treat our friends.

It’s in this environment where we just see our coworkers as objects, as other cogs in the machine that you end up kind of either feeling awkward about it or not knowing how to bring it up, all these sort of things that people end up doing that stops them from saying what they really should say. Those sorts of things arise in an environment where we see people as objects.

When we care about people, when we know them – this is one of the things that this company HG in the shift did so well – is they trained their leaders not in some process that made employees feel valued, not in some procedure that would make people think that they mattered, but they would literally tell them.

When a manager went into a new building for the …, he or she was instructed for the first 30 days or thereabouts they weren’t allowed to do anything except get to know the staff and the people. They weren’t allowed to change processes. They weren’t allowed to make new plans. They weren’t allowed to change their suppliers. They just spent all of their time getting to know people.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so funny. I’m imagining myself as that manager, like, “What an awesome month. This is just going to be fun.”

Kimberly White
Right?

Pete Mockaitis
“I can just get to know people. I cannot stress about lots of stuff.” It’s almost like having an extended vacation, hanging out with cool people.

Kimberly White
Right. Although, I’ll tell you. They continually had a problem that these managers couldn’t stand not to be solving problems because they’re managers. They wanted to go in and fix problems, so they had to make it so that they’d have to report on who they met that day and report on what they learned about people.

They’d also have to report on problems that they saw but didn’t fix because otherwise they’d go around fixing problems, which is I think just sort of a manager thing. But they would do this. They would legitimately do this.

Thirty days later – I mean just imagine. If you worked for a bad company – a lot of the time there would be these bad healthcare facilities that were losing money and they failed health inspections and they were not pleasant places to be in.

Then HG would come in, buy the facility, bring in a new manager and turn them around. That’s how they grow. That’s how they earn their money.

Now if somebody comes in, which is typical in the industry and in most industries, if a new boss comes in and just says, “You’re doing this wrong and that wrong, and this process is bad, and this person is bad. I’m going to fire a bunch of people, bring in all my own guys, tell you guys that you’re all doing it wrong.” The employees that stay just feel so insulted by that.

You might as well come in and say, “Everything you’re doing is wrong. You’re stupid,” because that’s how it feels. We got a new boss and he hates everything I’m doing. He thinks everything I’m doing is wrong. He’s firing my friends. It’s really demoralizing. It’s really, really difficult. It’s hard enough to get a new boss even if he’s great.

They would send these people in and they would spend 30 days just getting to know people. At the end of 30 days, you’ve got a staff that isn’t thinking, “He thinks I’m dumb. He hates me. He’s got all these new processes. We tried that last year. We already know it didn’t work.” They don’t disdain him. They are fond of him.

They know that he knows them. He can greet them by name because he spent all month getting to know people. He knows who has kids. He knows who works a second job. He knows who’s going back to school to get a nursing degree.

When you’re in an environment like that where people know each other and you know the boss cares about your job. When I say everybody, I mean everybody: the kitchen, the housekeeping staff, everybody. If you wash dishes in one of these facilities, the boss knows you.

Thirty days later, the boss would say – and this is the second important piece to the HG approach – the boss would gather all of his department heads and the leaders of the facility and ask them what they thought they needed to work on in the building.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Kimberly White
Now, instead of this new guy coming in and telling them all of the things they’re doing wrong and giving them a new process, he’s saying, “What do you think we can do better?” You know what? They always know. The people who are in this building, they know why it’s not making money. They know why it’s failed the health inspection.

They can feel perfectly free just to say, “I think our billing is inefficient. I think this process is too slow,” because they don’t have to feel defensive about it because nobody is attacking them.

I couldn’t find anybody who said there was a big problem that the leader had identified that the staff didn’t identify. They always get it.

Then the leader too. Now he’s a guy or she’s a girl who not only knows everybody on her staff, top to bottom, but also she has proven to herself that they know what they’re doing, that they know what the problems are, that they’re smart about identifying problems and solutions.

When she goes forward as a boss over the next years, she’s doing it with people that she trusts, that she values, that she knows, and people that she knows she can count on.

That kind of a work environment, where the boss isn’t pretending, doesn’t have an initiative, doesn’t have a binder that he’s looking at to try to make you feel good, but where the boss genuinely values you and can go into the kitchen and speak to the dishwasher by name and tell him he’s doing a great job.

The amount of dedication and hard work that these people put into their buildings is incredible. They work longer hours. They do more. They go out of their way. They do things that aren’t in their job description. They cover for each other when they’re on vacation.

I saw business behavior I would not have believed and I saw it all the time because people want to be friendly, people want to be helpful when they feel safe, when they feel like they matter, and when they know that they’re a real person to everyone around them. Then they treat each other that way. It kind of spreads.

That it’s not just – you bring in one boss who’s willing to make that 30-day effort to get to know people and treat them like they’re intelligent and like their input is good input, then everybody else becomes more willing to treat their coworkers that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a beautiful picture that you’re painting. It’s inspiring. It’s a beautiful thing. This just sparks so many things.

When we talk about sort of efficiency, many things came up. One, people are going to work at a lower wage when they’re just feeling great about the environment around them. Two, you’re coming up with all of these solutions and I’m thinking about my management consulting days. One month of a manager’s compensation is less than one month of Bain & Company fees.

Kimberly White
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
To come up with a bunch of solutions.

Kimberly White
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
In a way it’s massively efficient if it’s like we’re looking for leveraged approaches to getting solutions, we can hire the consultants or we can hire a manger who does nothing but get to know people for a month. It sounds like odds are strong you may come away with a bigger ROI on that month there than you would with a consultant or other solution finding approach.

Kimberly White
Yeah, HG is convinced that their financial success is largely due to this willingness to invest initially.

Like I said, so many people want to come in, snap their fingers, make a bunch of changes in the first 30 days, first 100 days.

In fact, I met a woman who had worked for a different company doing exactly that, going into facilities. She had 100 days to turn them around and make them profitable. She was a powerhouse. She was so fierce. She did that and made a ton of money. But she heard about HG and their way of doing things and got hired with them. When I … that she doesn’t make as much money … fixer.

But the reason she made the switch because she would go to these big meetings with the executives at the previous company and she had made them millions of dollars. She is so good. She had made them tons of money. Not one of them knew her name, not one of them. Over at HG, they all did. Even the executives made sure to get to know people and meet them. It’s a top down all the way thing.

There you go. She was making tons of money, more money than they could afford to pay her at this other … company. She left and they got her skills because she would rather be in an environment where she was valued.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. What you’re painting really does sound like a paradise, but you’ve got a chapter called The Paradise Delusion, so what’s the other side of this coin?

Kimberly White
Yup, yup. Oh my goodness, so yeah, we’re talking here about all of the good stuff and it behooves me to say none of this means that they didn’t have problems at HG. They still had turnover. You just always are going to have turnover in healthcare. They would still have government restrictions coming.

They dealt with things. None of this means that you’re not going to have problems, but you’re never going to have different departments needing or wanting different things. It just means that when those things happen, when you have people who really value each other, they can work it out in a way you can’t if everybody’s just an object to each other. You beat heads.

But as paradise delusion is concerned, the thing is very often when we are seeing people around us as objects and we’re unhappy and I would suggest that if we’re seeing the people around us as objects, we’re invariably going to be unhappy because objects are so stifling.

I found in my personal life as I went into HG and … these people and saw these friendly, familial work environments where people cared about each other and so on, it made me feel so much worse about my home life, which was very unhappy at the time.

I began to think, “Oh, I wish my husband would be like this person at this facility. I wish that my kids were as well-behaved as these people at this facility. I wish that my neighbors and coworkers were as … as these people.”

I called it a paradise delusion because I became convinced that what I needed to become happy in my life was to be surrounded by people who were going to be kind to …. I think that’s not at all uncommon when we’re unhappy, to feel like what I need is different people, different, nicer people who are going to value me again.

The reason that’s a delusion is because for one thing it’s never, ever, ever, ever going to happen, that there’s anybody on earth who’s completely surrounded by people who are always nice to him or her all of the time. Can’t be done. We are human beings. Nobody is nice all of the time. No group of people are all going to be nice all at the same time. It’s just never going to happen.

The second thing is when I think that paradise means everyone is going to be kind to me; I’m only thinking about myself. I’m thinking about what I want. I’m thinking about how I wish my husband would treat me, but in all of that – and maybe he is doing things that are unkind – but in thinking that way, I’m not sparing any mental energy to wonder what my husband wants.

What does he want from a spouse? What would he like for me to be doing? Does he want a nicer spouse? See that never crossed my mind. All I was thinking about is how I want other people around me to be different. I never thought about how they might want me to be different.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you. Well, so let’s get zoomed in shall we in terms of an individual professional in the heat of battle, if you will, in their workplace. What are some of the real keys to making the shift?

Kimberly White
Okay, first of all you have to be present with people. You have to be around them, especially if you’re a leader. You can’t get to know people if they’re always in their offices and you’re always in your office. You have to get to know people and take effort.

Usually that will mean asking questions. Where did you go to school? How do you like your job? What are you interested in? What do you do for your spare time? You can ask questions of people and get to know them.

There’s no way a person can be a real person for you if you don’t know anything about them. You have to start there. You have to start with finding out about them so that you know what’s relevant and what bothers them in their life.

At HG, you’ll see this in the book, they train their leaders to ask people

Kimberly White
“What makes your job hard for you?” because it validates them in the fact that there are things that are going to be hard, but then as a leader you know what the difficulties are. Instead of sitting back frustrated that people aren’t getting things in on time, you can just find out why is it hard to get things in on time. Then you know. Very often you can do something about it.

This works in personal life too. Why do you always forget to bring the milk home? Instead of just being mad and yelling at the person who isn’t doing what they’re asked, “Why is that hard?” You might find out there’s something you can do about it. You might find out there’s something you didn’t know that was going on in the background.

Asking questions is absolutely the first step. You get to know people and particularly find out if there’s something that’s irritating to you or something that’s a problem from your perspective, find out from them why it’s difficult. It’s a very, very humbling thing to do.

The second thing is to pay attention. You can’t fake caring about somebody. You can’t fake that they’re valuable to you. You can try and people see through it. It’s a waste of time, so don’t bother.

Ask the questions and pay attention. Watch people. Is this a cheerful person? Is this a grumpy person? See what’s going on. Then if there’s a change, you’ll notice it. If there’s a change, you’ll see it.

None of us want to be that person who … ten years later they suddenly woke up one day and said, “Oh my goodness, I never noticed how much he changed. I never noticed how much she had changed.” We need to pay attention as we go and notice the changes as they happen.

The third thing I would say is to always be willing to consider whether I am the problem because I don’t know what the problem is, you see. It’s quite possible that it’s me.

Talking about the paradise delusion with our coworkers or spouses or neighbors, we can be very irritated by something that they’re doing and wish that they would change and wish that they would be better, but we can never solve these problems and improve these relationships until we’re willing to recognize what we are doing that’s irritating to them.

When I am willing and able to say, “What am I doing that’s a problem for you?” that opens up the possibility of truly being able to fix these relationships that can’t be fixed as long as the only problem I’m willing to recognize is the one that they’re causing me.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, there’s just a lot of profundity here to sit with. I think I’ll be listening to this episode multiple times and I recommend listeners do the same.

Kimberly White
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s a few more pieces I want to get if you have some time.

Kimberly White
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
You say it’s possible that our worst employees can actually be the best. How does that work?

Kimberly White
Well, it goes back to the blindness we were talking about. When we see somebody as an object, we don’t really know what they’re capable of.

Some of the time, my experience has shown, that a person who is being a bad employee, who is acting out, who is resistant to instruction, all these things that make an employee difficult to deal with, very often those are people who react very … against being treated like an object. Very often these are people who are just very resistant to that feeling and can’t … that feeling.

Then when they’re treated well, when you begin to get to know them, and understand them and see where they’re coming from, there isn’t anything wrong with them as an employee. Their devotion to the work is great. Their knowledge is great. Their skills are wonderful. They just were so troubled by being treated like an object.

This is a funny story in my book. The founders of HG, their company, it became a running joke for them. When they would purchase a new facility and go in, they told me that invariably, invariably, the previous owners would tell them, “Well, watch out for so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so because they’re such trouble.” They’d give them like five names.

He said invariably when they went in and stated doing things this way, seeing people as people and started off by getting to know them and doing all that that most of those people on the watch-out-for list turned into their best employees.

We can’t make judgments about people while we’re seeing them as objects because there’s no way of knowing how much of their behavior is just a reaction to the very fact that I’m seeing them as an object.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. That’s powerful. I have to ask, even though it feels a little too silly from the heavy, powerful stuff we’ve had, but you’ve got a chapter that has poop in the title.

Kimberly White
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I can’t just walk away from that. What’s the story here?

Kimberly White
No, you can’t. It’s the poop chapter. I couldn’t believe my publisher let me do that. I’ll tell you why. It’s stilly, but it’s also profound I think.

This story is in the book too, but I was in a facility early, early on, the very beginning of this research, before I understood a lot these things that we’d been talking about. I learned it from these people. But I was in this facility and I was talking to a nursing assistant who didn’t speak very good English. I remember her so clearly.

Now, nursing assistants are the ones who change beds and for people who are incontinent, they change the briefs. They’ll help people to the toilet – somebody who needs to be rolled over or helped out of bed, they do all that sort of very close and physical work.

I had developed a habit of asking everybody that I met what was the best part of their job and what was the worst part of their job. I was asking this woman, “What’s the worst part of your job?” She paused for a minute and she told me that the worst part was when her patients pass away, which was just astonishing to me. I didn’t know that the people who worked in these places cared that deeply for one thing.

But the second thing was I knew what nursing assistants did, so I knew for a fact, we all know, that it’s got to be like changing the diapers and doing the poop and the diarrhea and stuff. That’s got to be the worst part. I asked her, like maybe she’d forgotten, “What about the diapers and stuff?” She looked at me like I was crazy. She said, “No, no, that’s for their dignity.”

I realized that for me poop was just this gross thing that I didn’t want to touch and that made me not want to work in healthcare because you might have to see some of that stuff and that’s yucky.

But that’s not what it was for her. Because the people that she cared for were real people to her, she didn’t see it as yucky, gross poop. To her it was well, these people, their bodies are failing them. I can help keep them dignified if I assist them with the toilet, if I keep them clean. I’m making them clean and safe and happy.

It wasn’t remotely the worst part of the job to her because it was what real people, people that she cared for, it was what real people needed.

The point of that chapter and the point of talking about poop at all is just to show how different everything, everything about other people looks when we can see them as they really are.

An object person, yes, their diapers are gross, but a real person with a life history who chats with me about their kids and tells me stories of the past and maybe tells me jokes, with that person if their body is aging and doesn’t function for them, it’s not the same thing at all. It becomes a sense of I want to help clean them up, make sure they don’t feel embarrassed.

It’s even the feces is different when we see people as people.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. This is just so good.

Kimberly White
Thank you. Thank you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you share a little bit when you’re in the midst of things, I think that many of us want to, we aspire to care about people regularly and then we get caught up in our own stuff and we get defensive and such. Do you have any tactical tips for when you’re in the moment, in the heat of it, what are some great ways that you can kind of quickly bring yourself back to a caring position?

Kimberly White
Oh my gosh. You’re asking the wrong person. I am so bad. But there’s a chapter about this too. It was one of the most disappointing things – one of the hardest things, but it turned out to be wonderful about learning all this stuff and this shift and seeing people as people.

It turns out I’m still just kind of me. I’m still just kind of a jerk. I can still fight. I can still see people as objects. I didn’t just magically turn into a fairy princess who scatters flowers around. It was very disappointing. I thought I was going to be better.

I actually think the first thing to do is just to remember human beings have faults. The other people around us are going to have faults. We shouldn’t condemn them for that and neither should we condemn ourselves. We can always fix the situation later. You can always apologize. There’s no sense in getting depressed when we find ourselves doing the jerky thing that we know we’re prone to do.

The second thing is when it’s a relationship that’s pivotal in your life, a spouse or a coworker or something that’s likely to come up a lot, then I would really, really recommend spending time –

We were talking before about the amount of time we spend griping about people that annoy us, try to spend an equal amount of time or even any amount of time thinking about the person that annoys you the most and what in their life, what pains and sorrows, and frustrations might be leading them to behave in a way that you find so difficult.

Then you have that place to go to. In the moment when you find yourself frustrated, you’ve already thought about that person as a person and instead of trying to generate that when you’re already upset, which I can tell you I don’t do very well, I don’t think most of us do.

But if I’ve already thought about it and already found a way to see that person as a person, and even please, taken some steps to show them, steps of kindness, to demonstrate the caring that I have, then when I find myself irritated, frustrated, grumpy, I have that mindset present to me. I can go there.

I can remind myself, “Okay, take a deep breath. Remember that she just got over being ill and she takes a medication.” “He was really disappointed last week at his performance, no wonder he’s stressed right now.” You can remind yourself of the things you know about the person that will make them seem human to you.

We do not have to just fall back into that, “He’s so annoying.” “She’s such a brat,” kind of way of thinking. We have the power because we run our own minds, we have the power to remind ourselves of the things we know about the person that are real, that are true, and that are human.

Then if you can’t do much in the moment, don’t be afraid to apologize. People love to get apologies and to make an acknowledgement of what I’ve done wrong. Nobody ever minds, ever, ever, ever will mind hearing, “I’m sorry. I messed that up.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Kimberly White
You’re quite welcome.

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

Kimberly White
Oh, we’ve had such a great conversation, Pete. I think we’ve covered everything. I just want to emphasize again how much power we have over our own lives and our own relationships.  The seeing people as people stuff, that’s not only for people who were born cheerful. It’s not only for people who were born calm. That is a decision we get to make in every moment of our lives.

Am I just going to sit back and think about myself and everybody around me gets to be an object or am I going to say, “Wait. What’s he thinking? What’s she thinking?” It doesn’t take any skills. It doesn’t take a degree. It doesn’t take a particular upbringing. That is just a choice we get to make. It’s a choice that will change everything in our lives if we’re willing to make it.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Kimberly White
Well, it was just so powerful to me. One of the founders of this company was talking to me about motivating employees. He said that he’s against trying to motivate employees. He said this, “Leadership is like a fire.  A good leader doesn’t come in and blow on the flame and take credit. He sees the flame that’s already there and clears away debris to let it grow.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you.

Kimberly White
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Now how about a favorite book?

Kimberly White
The Remains of the Day. Are you familiar with that one?

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know a lot about it, but I know the title. It’s ringing a bell.

Kimberly White
Yeah, and they made a movie of it. No, it is a story about a man who devoted his whole life and made tremendous and painful personal sacrifices thinking he was on the right side of history and it turned out he was not and sort of had to confront that in his old age.

I just am so moved by the human experience and just the disappointments we all have just because we’re flawed human beings. We don’t have to have lived the perfect life. Humanity isn’t about getting it right. It’s just about being human.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite habit?

Kimberly White
I like to eat a chocolate smoothie in my bed and read with my door locked. I will read anything. Mostly I read non-fiction. But the chocolate smoothie just puts that over the edge, I’m telling you. It’s like ice cream without the guilt.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people when you share it?

Kimberly White
You asked great questions and brought out all the good stuff.

One thing that resonates a lot with people is this little tidbit. Before I started working on this book, I was headed for divorce. I was so unhappy. I thought this was going to be the way to make the money I needed to be independent and split. Now, I am happily married to the same man.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you.

Kimberly White
In case you’re wondering, does this really work? Yeah, it does actually. It really, really, really does. It’s not just pie in the sky. It’s not just quotable quotes. Life can be different. Life can be better than we tend to think. Humans are awesome. Ordinary people have so much capacity and so much greatness inside them. We’re surrounded by it. We can produce it and we can see it in others and it’s just miraculous.

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

Kimberly White
I would point them to my website, KimberlyWhiteBooks.com. That’s books plural. My book, The Shift: How Seeing People as People Changes Everything is available at all major book sellers. For leaders, I recommend 800-CEO-Read. For everybody else, go to Amazon and you probably will anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kimberly White
Yes. If you want to be awesome at your job, start by finding out where you’re not awesome. If you’re not willing to … and fix them, you can never be awesome at your job. Find what it is, fix it, and ask somebody at work. They’ll be able to tell you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing the goods. It’s powerful stuff and I’m excited to see what transformations emerge from it. Please keep doing the great work that you’re doing.

Kimberly White
Thank you so much. It’s been just delightful to be with you.