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May 09
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297: Encouraging Insight Through More Coach-like Conversations with Michael Bungay Stanier

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Michael Bungay Stanier says: "Be lazy, be curious, be often."

Michael Bungay Stanier returns to talk about become more coach-like by staying curious longer and giving advice a bit more slowly.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we more naturally give advice rather than ask questions
  2. The questions effective coaches ask
  3. How to deal with the uncoachable

About Michael

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder of Box of Crayons, a company best known for teaching 10-minute coaching so that busy managers can build stronger teams and get better results. On the way to founding Box of Crayons in 2002, Michael lived in Australia, England, the United States and Canada, his current home. He has written a number of books. His latest, the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Coaching Habit, has sold over 350,000 copies. It has been praised as one of the few business books that actually makes people laugh out loud. He was the first Canadian Coach of the Year, is a Rhodes Scholar, and was recently recognized as the #3 Global Guru in coaching. Balancing out these moments of success, Michael was banned from his high school graduation for “the balloon incident,” was sued by one of his law school lecturers for defamation, and his first published piece of writing was a Harlequin romance short story called “The Male Delivery.”

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Michael Bungay Stanier Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, welcome back to the How to Be Awesome at Your Job Podcast.

Michael Bungay Stanier
It is lovely to be back. This is will be fun. I can just feel it in my bones that this is going to be a great conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
I feel it too. The last one was so fun and you’re too kind for coming back. I was but a newbie, only 55 episodes in back then. I misspelled your name. I kind of had some facts about you wrong. And you came back for more, what a sport.

Michael Bungay Stanier
It all made me sound much more interesting than I am, calling me Nigel Bungay Stanier is odd, but I flew with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Nigel, it’s among the most sophisticated and intellectual of options. I realized last time we never talked about the balloon incident in your high school. I think that’s important to get on the record over here.

Michael Bungay Stanier
You’re right. In my bio it says ‘was banned from his high school graduation for the balloon incident.’ Here’s my decision on this. I’m never going to tell what that is actually about. But I’ll tell you what, Pete. The truth is the story itself is actually less exciting and enticing than that awesome one-liner sounds.

It is true that I was banned from my high school graduation for the balloon incident, but I want to leave it up to people’s imagination, just what can one man do with some balloons that is significant that he is not allowed to then graduate from his high school, where, by the way, I won prized and I did this and I did that and they still wouldn’t let me participate in the ceremony. I’m just going to tantalize people with that.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so intrigued and I am tantalized. In a way I can kind of relate. You’re a Rhodes Scholar, yes?

Michael Bungay Stanier
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
An impressive intellect. You’d think they’d want to honor one of their best and brightest during the big day. I’m going to just imagine that the balloon ended up destroying an expensive piece of equipment. That’s what I have in my imagination.

Michael Bungay Stanier
I can neither confirm nor deny that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, well I’m going to roll with that for now.

We talked way back in episode 55 and we kind of got the basics of what your book The Coaching Habit is all about. It’s since become much more of a smash hit now than it was before.

Michael Bungay Stanier
It’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about living that life. When you hit 1,000 Amazon reviews does Jeff Bezos come by your house or-?

Michael Bungay Stanier
He does, yeah. Exactly. In fact Jeff got my name tattooed on to his arm in celebration of the book. No, that didn’t happen.

The book is a little over two years old now. It launched February the 29th 2016 because February the 29th, why wouldn’t I choose that date. It has gone from strength to strength. It’s about 400,000 copies sold. It’s constantly in the top 1,000 books sold on Amazon, which is exciting.

In fact last week it got up to the number six book overall on Kindle books on Amazon. Number one in the business category. To all of your audience, they don’t care about this, but I was geeking out about this.

As you said, we’ve got over 1,000 reviews on Amazon. In fact, we’ve now got over 1,000 five-star reviews. It’s just a well-received book that we worked really hard to write and publicize and all of that. But somewhere along the lines someone sprinkled fairy dust into the mix and so it’s just going gangbusters. It’s very exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so good. I’d like to maybe first get your take when it comes to –you say the word coaching, could you get us oriented a little bit in terms of what you mean, what you don’t mean and any kind of preconceptions you want to make it clear that you are not that?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, it’s a great question and I’m going to just tweak it a little bit and frame it up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so coach-like of you.

Michael Bungay Stanier
That is right. The purpose of this book, even though coaches love it, is actually not to make people into coaches. It’s to help people be more coach-like.

Because actually the person that I had in mind when I wrote this book, and I will say the people more broadly than this, but the person I desperately had in mind was you are a busy, engaged manager. You are doing the best you can, but you are a bit overwhelmed. You are a bit stuck. You’re not …. The one who got the next leap forward is for you to have more impact and find more meaning in the work that you do.

This is the person who I imagine, she goes up to the airport book store, she sees the book there, she picks it up, she goes, “I could read this”. It’s a short, interesting looking book and she finds a tool to help her be more coach-like.

What do I mean by more coach-like? Here’s the thing. I boil it down to a very simple behavior and it is this, can you stay curious a little bit longer, can you rush to action and advice giving just a little bit more slowly.

Now you can talk about coaching in different ways. In the book I talk about a coaching cycle and that’s a new insight typically generated by good question, an insight about yourself or about the situation leads to a positive behavior change. In other words you do something differently.

Positive behavior change leads to increased impact, hopefully positive increased impact, which in turn leads back around to new insight about yourself and about the situation. That’s kind of the dynamic of what coaching is.

I like John Whitmore’s definition of coaching more broadly which is helping people learn rather than teaching them, helping them to unlock their own potential. I think that’s really nice.

But all of that stuff is a bit abstract, a bit theoretical. I just love keeping it at a behavior change level, which is can you stay curious a little bit longer, can you rush action and advice giving a little bit more slowly because I think most people are advice giving maniacs. They love it.

They’re trigger wired to actually leap in with ideas, suggestions, solutions, ways you should do it even when they have no idea what’s actually going on. We’re just trying to shift that behavior just a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s very handy. Then you lay out some excellent questions that are powerful and flexible. That’s where we spent most of our time in the last conversation. How about I take a crack at doing maybe a two-minute summary and you can tell me all the ways that I’ve grossly mischaracterized your opus.

Michael Bungay Stanier
I’m quietly confident you’re totally going to nail this, so take it away. The seven questions from the coaching heaven. Drumroll please.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, it’s on.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Pete, number one is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, the opening question, what’s on your mind that enables you to focus the conversation and position your partner to do the thinking?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Perfect, and get into the juicy stuff fast. Sometimes it’s like… it’s like trying to chat somebody up at a bar. You know once you get into it, it’s going to be fine, but what’s the question that gets you into it.

We call this the quick start question, which is how do you accelerate into a more interesting conversation more quickly. That’s perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Then there’s the AWE question, which is actually a mini-acronym. It stands for And What Else. That helps you get into further depth and seeing really where they’re coming from with that.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Perfect. We call it the best coaching question in the world in part because it gives juice to every other question and you’ve got to know that their first answer is never their only answer and it’s rarely their best answer, but secondly, it is a self-management tool to help you stay curious a little bit longer because if you’re asking anyone else, you’re not giving advice.

Pete Mockaitis
Then there’s the lazy question, how can I help. Well, it’s lazy because you don’t have to figure out how you can help. You can just give up and let them figure that out for you. But that actually helps eliminate redundancy and make your contributions all the more on point anyway.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, I love that. The insight that people tend to leap in and start fixing things before they really know what’s going on, the lazy question is a great anecdote to that. Now I think the lazy question in the book is number five or number six. Can you remember what number three is?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, maybe I’m out of order.

Michael Bungay Stanier
The focus question.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
The focus question is what’s the real challenge here.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
Kind of focusing in on the main thing.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, and if you want to make that really powerful, you don’t just ask what’s the challenge here, you don’t just ask what’s the real challenge here, you ask what’s the real challenge here for you. That ‘for you’ on the end of it is a way of spinning the spotlight from the problem to the person solving the problem. It becomes a deeper, more powerful, more useful conversation right away.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Then – well, now my numbers, I don’t even know.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Number four, which is the foundation question.

Pete Mockaitis
What do you want?

Michael Bungay Stanier
You got it.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like I’m in school. Praise me, Michael.

Michael Bungay Stanier
You nailed it. It’s classic. You’re amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. That’s sort of that get after the primary goal and focusing your energy there. A lot of people don’t even know what they want.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Perfect. The next question is the strategic question.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s just sort of like an opportunity cost. If I say yes to this, what do I say no to?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. Where are you powerful? It connects actually to a previous book I wrote called Do More Brave Work, which basically says three types of work in this world. Everything you do falls into one of these three buckets.

It’s either bad work  mind-numbing, soul-sucking, life-crushing work. It’s either good work, your job description in short  productive, efficient, effective, getting things done, but also keeps you stuck in a bit of comfortable rut. Or it’s great work, work that has more impact, work that has more meaning.

When it comes down to it, the coaching question, the strategic question, what am I going to say yes to, if I’m saying yes to that, what must I say no to, is actually the core question that lies behind helping you and everyone do more great work.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Then the final one is the learning question. What did I take away from this conversation?

Michael Bungay Stanier
You got it, exactly. There’s variations on that. The variation I use most often was what is most useful and most valuable here for you. Not only forces them to get … from the conversation and a … that they may well otherwise miss, but also beneficiary, it gets you feedback as to what went well in that conversation, so the next conversation is going to be even more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s good. There we are, we’re all on the same page in terms of what are the questions. Now I really want to know having lived it, worked with many, many clients, many, many readers, what are you noticing in terms of in practice what is really working well and what is not working so well when folks are trying to adopt a coaching habit?

Michael Bungay Stanier We picked seven questions. You can guess that I think they’re the best seven questions. I spent a lot of time adding questions, subtracting questions, putting more questions in, trying to do fewer questions. But I think these are seven really powerful, useful questions.

But in the end it matters less which question you pick and more about can you commit to staying curious a little bit longer. It’s worth looking at the things people struggle with, which is actually that behavior change. Why do people, when they’re rushing and give solutions, give answers, give ideas so quickly into the conversation?

Well, there’s an obvious answer, which is it’s habit. This is the thing that for your entire career basically your entire life because in high school and university as well, you’ve been praised and rewarded for having the answer. You have a pretty deep habit here of the way I add value, the way I get an A, the way I get a star, the way I get a pat on the back is by being the person with the answer.

It’s fair to say that on that kind of top level, the reason why being more coach-like is so hard is just that we’ve been practicing other stuff for years and years and years now.

But there’s a deeper level, Pete. I think that’s interesting to uncover. It’s where your question takes me is there’s a more subtle reason why people don’t want to become more coach-like, in other words, stay curious a little bit longer, rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly, is that it’s about power and control. Those two things that typically just below the surface in most relationships at work and at home as well.

Because when you’re giving the answer, it’s a pretty nice place to be. You feel like you’re the smart person. You feel like you have high status in the conversation. You’re the one with the answer; they’re the one with the question. You know what’s happening; they don’t know what’s happening. You feel in control of the conversation. You know how it’s playing out. You know how it’s going to end. You really go, I love giving advice.

Here’s the thing, even if your advice isn’t nearly as good as you think it is, which almost always is the case, even if you’re giving advice about the wrong thing, it still feels pretty good to give advice. However, when you ask a question – and questions are the portals toward staying curious a little bit longer – when you ask a question, it’s a much less comfortable experience.

First of all you hand control of the conversation to that other person. They’re going to take it some place that you don’t quite know where. By the way, this is what’s called empowerment. Nobody makes a strong case about I’m anti-empowerment. But the subtlety of empowerment is actually giving up power to the other person. That’s what’s happening when you ask a question.

When you ask a question, you actually move from a place of certainty to uncertainty. You step into this place of going, was that a good question, did that land, did they understand it, what answer are they going to give me, how do I handle that answer, what’s going to happen next. There’s all these uncertainties.

Part of our brain wiring is avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty is how you get eaten by a dinosaur or saber tooth tiger or wooly mammoth or something.

It takes practice and kind of overcoming some of your wiring to say, I’m going to ask a question, I’m going to give up control, I’m give up certainty, I’m going to stay in ambiguity for the longer game, the longer game of empowering those around you, increasing focus and productivity, and self-sufficiency, and accountability, and all of those good things.

It’s actually going to help me work less hard, but have more impact because I’m going to have a smarter, braver, more courageous, more focused team around me. But in the moment, it’s just really tempting to resort back to the advice giving.

When you ask kind of what’s worked, what’s not worked, the questions work. We’ve done this with 70 – 80,000 managers now plus the 400,000 people who bought the book. We know these are good questions but the struggle is the behavior change. That’s the thing for people to work on.

But actually, I’m just going to say one other thing, just one other things about, don’t tell anybody else, but we’ve just released kind of on stealth mode an app onto iTunes. It’s called Ask More. It’s only available for the iPhone.

Pete Mockaitis
We won’t tell.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Don’t tell anybody. But it’s a Tinder meets coaching. It’s a way of tracking your own commitment to being more coach-like. Swipe left, I gave advice. Swipe right, I stayed curious. You actually get to track your own practice like that.

We haven’t really made a big deal about that, but if people want to go and check it out, they’re welcome to kind of test it a bit for us and give us some feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. Thank you. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes. I’m intrigued. It’s about the behavior change and part of the behavior I guess is just doing it in the first place, like just choosing to ask the question instead of giving advice.

Then I’m also thinking about when you spoke to that notion of power, I guess I’m thinking about how you ask the question too. Because as you described it, it’s true, there are times I’ve asked questions and I was entering that vulnerable place of “Okay, what’s going to happen. I don’t quite know.”

There are other times I’ve asked a question and I’ve still felt very much confident and empowered. It’s just like, “I’m just segmenting you. You’re going to give me one of four answers and based upon that I will proceed to give you the appropriate advice.” They’re very different experiences.

Michael Bungay Stanier
I think you’re right. The thing that I think is the subtlety here and the thing to bear in mind is to go for who’s sake am I asking this particular question.

It’s one of the reasons why in general we encourage people to stay away from the idea of asking why questions. Obviously why questions have their place. If people … you start with why. It’s all about being a purpose-driven company. Fantastic. Some of you may know the ladder of inference. You ask why five times to get a root cause of a situation. Perfect.

But in terms of every day interactions with people, asking why doesn’t work so well. Here’s why. The first is it’s actually quite tricky to ask the question why without it sounding a bit accusatory, a bit judgmental. “Why did you do that?” will typically be heard as, “Why the hell did you do that?” You’ve got that.

But the second thing and this feed to that more subtle reason about for whose sake are you asking this question. If you’re asking why, what you’re really doing is explain your motives, explain your thinking, explain what was going on for you. What you’re typically doing is you’re trying to gather data so that you are better able to then provide advice as to what the person should do.

Our approach in our corporate training programs is basically we’ve got three principles  be lazy, be curious, be often.

Being curious, of course, managing the advice monster, that tendency we have to leap to advice. Being often, understanding that every interaction can be a little more curious, a little less rush to action and advice.

But being lazy, is this piece about going how do I stop talking responsibility for that other person’s life. In that asking why, you’ve got somebody working out how do I figure out what’s going on, so I can give the better answer. I can jump in and fix you for you. As opposed to saying, “Hey Pete, big challenge ahead of you, but this is your challenge, so let me help you figure it out.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I’d also love to get your take then when folks are having troubles with the implementation or making the shift. Have you encountered any other surprises like, “Huh, how about that? When people are doing this, this sort of thing keeps popping up.”

Michael Bungay Stanier
It’s a good question. I would say that one of the points of resistance to coaching is the fear that you will inverted commas ‘go too far,’ like I’m going to ask a question that will make this person reveal their dark, and terrible, and sad, and horrible past, and I won’t know how to handle that.

What happens in kind of subtle ways people go, “I’m not going to ask Pete this question because he probably can’t handle it.” But what they’re often saying is, “I’m not going to ask Pete this question because I probably can’t handle it. I don’t know where it’s going, I don’t know what this is going to reveal, I don’t know what this is about.”

We kind of make up this, “Oh, look how nice I am to protect this person from themselves,” when in fact it’s really just a justification to step away from having the courageous conversation.

It was a bit of a rambling answer, but I do think there’s something to say for people … who like, “I’d like to give this a go, I just don’t know,” is it’s an art, not a science. What you’re doing is you’re practicing staying curious.

What you’ll find is you can ask more questions than you thought and that will make more progress then you thought possible if you can just follow the discipline and ask a good question, be genuinely interested in what the answer is, and shut up and actually listen to that answer.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And courage, I think yeah, that’s the word. I guess depending on your state of mind as you talk about some of these stakes that show up and what can unfold. I guess sometimes I’m thinking, “Oh, how exciting. Let’s see where this goes,” other times I’m like, “Oh, how terrifying. I don’t know where this is going to go.”

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. Right. You’re pointing to it perfectly which is, “Oh my goodness, where is this going? Ah.” Okay, but if you’re in service to the person you’re having conversation with, I think of this as a classic example of servant leadership. If you’re in true service to this person, you’re going to go, “Right, how do I help? How can I be of service? How do I put my discomfort aside so that other person can find something valuable here?”

Pete Mockaitis
I heard you on Todd Henry show, The Accidental Creative. He was on our show recently. I’m using the past tense. I’m assuming it will air before this one airs. Awesome guy. I love the definition you shared about what is it to be an adult or to have an adult conversation.

Michael Bungay Stanier
This caters nicely to that fourth question, the foundation question  what do you want. You could say that Box of Crayons, we have this focus of teaching 10-minute coaching, so busy managers can build stronger teams and get better results.

But behind that is a commitment to help people build adult-to-adult relationships in the work place. How do you show up as a grownup in your own life knowing that institutions work really hard to overturn that dynamic? They much prefer a feel like a parent-child relationship rather than an adult-to-adult relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that because folks will just do what they’re told and cause less headaches for everybody?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah. I think they think it means about it’s about being compliant so we get forced into – do we get forced – the culture encourages us to sometimes be the parent, sometimes be the child.

But it’s harder to show up as an adult because with an adult – and I take this from Peter Bock, who taught me about this. He’s saying, “Look, when you’re an adult, you take responsibility for your own freedom.” You take responsibility for the choices you have in front of you and you take those choices.

When you make those choices, … experience of an adult is you have the liberation of owning your own life, but when you make choices it comes with both guilt and anxiety. Guilt about, “What about those other options that I turned down? What’s going to happen to them?” Anxiety about “Is this the right choice? What if this choice doesn’t play out?”

For me, talking about your question, a nice way I heard of defining an adult-to-adult relationship is can you ask for what you want knowing that the answer may be no.

I would say that for many of us, we often don’t know what we want. We haven’t done that thinking, that work, that kind of connecting to heart, mind, soul. We’re not good at asking for what we want even if we know it. We’re not good at hearing other people’s requests and knowing that we can say yes or no to those requests.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s potent stuff there. I’m wondering about maybe the why and it’s I guess just fear. It’s like if you do know what you want and you don’t ask for it, what’s underneath that is probably the sensation of if I hear a no then this dream has been murdered. There’s no hope for it.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Right, yeah. I think that’s absolutely right. Then you find yourself trading away your life for the temporary comfort of not pushing for what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this got deep.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. It suddenly got deep. Come on everybody, lighten up for goodness sake.

Pete Mockaitis
I also want to get your take here to shift gears a bit, I’ve heard the term often when I was in consulting about how one should be coachable. It’s great to be coachable and “Oh, you know, she’s not so coachable. Oh, be coachable.” This is a word I hear a lot of.

What’s your take having done a lot of coaching, helped a lot of people be more coach-like? Are some people uncoachable? How does one become more coachable? What is to be done with this?

Michael Bungay Stanier
That is a good question. I’ve been wrestling with this myself. I think people are – there are some people who are in that moment uncoachable.

Pete Mockaitis
In the moment, okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier
I’m sure I’ve been uncoachable in moments myself.

What does that mean? I think it means that you’re – if you think of the outcome of coaching being new insights leading to new actions, leading to increased impact, it means that you’re unwilling to let in new insights. It means that you’re unwilling to try something new and try a different behavior; therefore that increasing impact isn’t going to be available to you, certainly not in a more mindful, deliberate way.

Yeah, I think it’s probably easy enough to be uncoachable.

You can frame it in another way, which is like if you think about the bell curve. In the one end you’ve got people who are the keeners, who are like, “Oh man, I love this coaching stuff. I’m all over it.” You’ve got people in the middle who are like, “I’m open to it, but I’m not sure.”

Then you’ve got people on the other end who you could call them the cynics. I think there’s some sort of Greek – the translation of what a cynic is. Is this right? It’s something along the lines of – and this is probably not suitable for work – but it’s like doglike, meaning like a dog you lift your leg and you pee on things.

The cynics tend to have already made up their minds about what’s going to happen and nothing’s going to convince them otherwise.

Skeptics on the other hand, I quite like. Skeptics are people who are like, “You know what? I’ve had my heart broken too many times, but secretly I would love this to work because if it works, I’m going to be a great champion for it. I’m just suspicious because I’ve heard the promises before.” But cynics like you’ve already decided this is going to be bad and it’s hard to work with cynics.

That answers part of your question which is are people uncoachable. I think some people are some of the time. I don’t think that means you’re uncoachable for the rest of your life.

Then what does it take to be coach-like. Well, if you come back to that definition of insight, action, impact, I think, in general, it’s a willingness to allow insights to show up and it’s a willingness to move to action and try something new.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. I’d love to hear, when you’re sharing this with folks, because I imagine listeners are all excited like, “Oh yeah, we’re to do this in our group. It’s going to be great.” Then if they do encounter a cynic or a wet blanket or those who say that is very – “That coaching stuff, that feels very touchy feely. That feels very California. You know what? We’ve got a lot of tasks we’ve got to knock out now, now, now. There’s urgency.”

I’m sure you’ve heard all the resistance points as your team is selling the good stuff How do you – if folks are feeling like they’re not feeling it, sort of entice them with a little bit of curiosity and openness, so we can take a little bit of a step?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Part of it is a bigger approach to coaching, which is we rarely try and push coaching on people because people are too busy, people are skeptical, people have baggage around coaching which I totally get.

The metaphor I offer up is it’s a little bit like trying to feed a two-year-old spinach. One of the options is you put a lump of spinach on the two-year-olds plate and go, “Hey, eat the green, slimy vegetable.” For some reason the two-year-old is going to go, “You know what? I’m just not eating your spinach. Sorry about that.”

I’m not a parent, but I’ve heard it said that smart parents take the spinach and they blend it into the spaghetti sauce and they actually eat, so the kid doesn’t even know that they’re actually eating the spinach.

I think my approach to being more coach-like, which I’m differentiating from coaching. Different to stay curious than it is to say, “Alright Pete, come into my office. I’m going to coach you now,” which is slightly terrifying for everybody.

Being more coach like means staying curious a little bit longer. Really it’s just another way of having a conversation. If you can just slow down that rush to action and advice, stay curious a bit longer, you’re going to have a coaching experience whether you want to particularly label it being more coach-like.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, got it. Cool. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your latest favorite things?

Michael Bungay Stanier
No, I think we – I mean we’ve gone to some interesting places already.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Can you share with us then a favorite quote, something that’s been inspiring you lately?

Michael Bungay Stanier
My quotes all tend to circulate around the giving a strong yes or making a no. The – oh, I’ve forgotten his name. The guy who created CD Baby. He says, “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.” In terms of thinking about commitment, I think that can be great.

I’ve got a quote on my desk from Charles Bukowski, who’s a poet, something similar it says, “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.” I’m like exactly that. That’s a quote that’s … in Box of Crayons we’re writing strategic planning moments, so we’re thinking what are big gambles are for the next couple of years.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, can you share a favorite study, something that you find quite insightful?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Well, I’ve just had the luxury of coming back from the TED conference in Vancouver. Part of what TED is about is to both in kind of equal parts inspire you and terrify you as to what’s happening in the world. One of the studies that could be see business leaders and educators talking, but sometimes it’s scientists and engineers as well.

One of the guys who got up and talked, and I’m sure this will be released eventually as a TED talk, was basically saying, “I’ve just –” you know how DNA has four letters to it  G, T, C, and A and that’s the alphabet that makes up our entire life. What he’s done is found two additional letters to add to that so that there are now six letters rather than four letters.

Very engaged and he’s all sorts of and this is how it gets contained, but he’s actually showing us slides of synthetic life that he’s made in this tweaked DNA. I have to say that’s a pretty amazing thing to reflect on. How’s that going to work?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. That just sort of stretches the brain into whole new places it’s never been before.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, it totally does.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. How about a favorite book?

Michael Bungay Stanier
I am going back to a book that I read some years ago, but I’ve just pulled it out again recently. I’m just reaching over to my bookshelf there. It’s by Carl Honore and it’s called In Praise of Slow.

It kind of talks about the slow travel movement and the slow food movement and just a reflection that so much of our life and our pace and the complexity of everything is only ratcheting up. Somebody said to me today, your life will never be less complex than it is today. I’m like, “Oh, that’s depressing.” It feels pretty complicated already. That book, In Praise of Slow, I think is an interesting read.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Michael Bungay Stanier
I’m not sure if you’d call this a tool or not, but it’s my attempts to shut down my technology, so it’s like an anti-tool. I don’t have the discipline I would love to have to not check my phone as much and not check my laptop as much.

On my phone, I’ve recently removed a lot of the key apps. I have removed my email app and I’ve removed the Facebook app, and I’ve removed my Asana to-do app. It just means that my phone is now useful for a few things and useless for much of things. I’m trying to remove all the areas where I get easily seduced into behavior that is I feel less useful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, any other favorite habits to speak to?

Michael Bungay Stanier
The only habit that I can consistently maintain is making myself an espresso coffee every morning. All sorts of like meditation and journaling and stuff, it ebbs and it flows a little bit, but my main habit  drink two good espressos early on in the morning. Not very useful to most people I’m afraid.

Pete Mockaitis
It had its purpose. It has its place, its value. Is there a particular nugget that you’ve been sharing that’s really been connecting, resonating, getting note taken, retweeted, etcetera?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Well, the conversation within Box of Crayons, I’m not sure of this is echoing beyond that. Most of the stuff that tends to be repeated and resaid around social media tends to be around The Coaching Habit book at the moment. People have heard about that.

This comes a part of being in TED again and watching Peter Diamandes who created the X Prize, the thing about trying to get a private company to land a machine on the moon. He is very much about the bold scalability of things. It’s like what’s the 10x version of that.

The thing that is kind of echoing around Box of Crayons at the moment is how do we imagine what 10x’ing some of the projects that we have on the go might be. We don’t really have good answers to any of that, but it’s making us think really hard.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
If you’re interested in the book, The Coaching Habit book, TheCoachingHabit.com is the place for that. You can download the first two or three chapters and get podcasts and tools and other kind of stuff to pillage from the website, so you’re welcome to go there. Obviously the book is available in Amazon and elsewhere.

If you’re interested in our program for your organization, need to do corporate training, so that’s BoxOfCrayons.com.

If you’re interested in just a little bit more about me and what I’m up to and some tools outside practical coaching skills, my full name MichaelBungayStanier, my surname is Bungay-Stanier, .com is the place to go for there.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yes. What’s the bottom 10% that you’re going to eliminate?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now 10% of I guess, of what?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Percent of people, of activities, of-

Michael Bungay Stanier
People can go any way they want with that, but there’s a bottom 10% in some area you could pick which is limiting you and the courageous act is to eliminate that bottom 10%, so what do you want to do?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking about the bottom 10% in my refrigerator.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Well, there you go.

Pete Mockaitis
That would be a courageous act to get in there.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. That thing that was formerly known as lettuce probably isn’t anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Michael, this has been a great deal of fun yet again.

Michael Bungay Stanier
It has.

Pete Mockaitis
Please keep doing the great work you’re doing for the world.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Thanks man, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Apr 18
0

288: Managing First-Timers in the Workplace with Chris Deferio

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Chris Deferio says: "You don't want to rob people of their failures; you don't want people to only do exactly what you say in every case."

Coffee shop guru & latte art champion Chris Deferio speaks on leading people who are at their first “real job” and keys to thriving in a chaotic environment.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Best approaches for managing first timers
  2. How to offer feedback so it’s received well
  3. Tips on how to keep sane and focused in a chaotic environment

About Chris

Chris Deferio is the host and producer of the Keys to the Shop podcast. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife and son and has been in professional coffee service for 17 years. He provides training, consultations, and wisdom to owners, managers, and employees across cafes worldwide. His podcast is dedicated to the success of coffee shops and the professionals that make them work.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Chris’ championship-winning latte art

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Chris Deferio Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thanks so much for joining us here at the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Chris Deferio
I’m honored to be on your show.  I really love and I’m looking forward to talking about this subject today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.  Well, I was honored to be on your show, Keys To The Shop.  A good spot, and so, folks, check that out.  But first I want to talk about you being a champion in latte art.  How does that come about, and what does a latte art contest look like in practice?

Chris Deferio
Well, we can define the terms.  Well, I work in coffee.  And in coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, there’s this thing where you steam milk so that the foam is tight enough and flows enough to be able to form ribbons on the surface of beverages, specifically espresso drinks.  And you can see rosettas, what we call leaves, hearts, designs like that – usually symmetrical leaf / heart designs on the tops of coffees.  It’s actually pretty popular; so popular now, weirdly, you’ll see it on International Delight creamers.  They’ll hire a barista to do a heart and they’ll use in their marketing.  So that’s latte art, so milk art, because “latte” is Italian for “milk”.
So, we have competitions for these types of things, of course, because we’ve got to entertain ourselves, and there’s money on the line.  And I won my first one back in 2004 and I ended up winning two times after that, so three times total latte art champion.  And just sounds really funny to say, but the skill involved in it is one of just becoming sort of familiar with what the two liquids do when they meet in the cup, and it’s important.  I don’t want to downplay it too much, because a well-presented coffee is one that you’ll talk to your friends about, which means repeat business.  So it translates into something practical, and it’s fun to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to know what are the game-changing, winning designs that capture the judges’ hearts?

Chris Deferio
Well, speaking as a judge – I run a competition now with Coffee Fest tradeshows.  And I’ve been a long time judge before; I’m back again leading the Latte Art Competition as a judge, head judge, and there’s a lot of things we look for.  My designs when I won were basically variations on a leaf pattern that involved a lot of layers from the outside of the cup into the middle.  So, just a nice base, and I’m speaking in coffee terms – symmetry is really important, striking contrasts between the brown of the coffee in the white of the milk is also very important.
In the competition we judge on speed and also a general kind of flexible category, depending on the judge, of aesthetic beauty.  So, those are some of the categories we look for.  So there are some game-changing designs out there where people will do multiple different designs in the cup at the same time.  I was one of the people – old guy in coffee – that have pushed some of those designs out there into the industry, and now it’s really just about perfecting.  There’s not a ton of brand new stuff, just variations on classics, as far as I can tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, do you have some photos we could see in the show notes?

Chris Deferio
Oh yeah, I’ll send you some of mine and I’ll send you some of the winningest baristas’ examples.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.  Well, I’m trying to imagine, because you don’t have a lot of space to work with, and I guess it can’t get too out there, in terms of, this is a portrait of a person who is running on the beach.

Chris Deferio
Oh yeah.  Well, it does in some ways, it does, because people do one of two types of latte art.  You have etching, which uses a tool to draw a design like you’re describing.  You theoretically could do that.  The drink might be cold by the time you’re done, and it might not taste great.  I don’t know what they’re using for drawing, but we do free pour latte art predominantly.  I think that in competition may be the more respected version of latte art. So there are two types of latte art – there’s free pour and there’s etching.  So etching is just using a tool, so you could draw that.  You could draw yourself in a cup of coffee if you really wanted to.  But we do free pour latte art, so there’s no tools involved, just the flow of milk.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.  So, you are coffee master and professional and you share some of that in your podcast Keys To The Shop.  What’s that all about?

Chris Deferio
Well, Keys To The Shop I’ve had for the last year or so – back in January 2017 – is a podcast that I run collecting best practices essentially from the industry to help people.  My tagline of the show is to give insights and inspiration and tools to people who work in retail, especially coffee retail.  And my audience is built, it is made up of owners, baristas, managers, people who would one day want to own a coffee bar.
And we bring in not only just industry experts to talk about workflow behind the bar, like how to build a drink quickly and well, or conflict resolution and things like that.  We bring in outside experts as well – authors of books dealing with management, or like I said conflict resolution is one.  Tom Henschel of The Look & Sound of Leadership did an episode on the podcast about conflict resolution, which translates into whatever industry you want to, because you’re working with people.  So, the point is, I want to provide a really focused podcast to equip my industry with the tools they need to succeed, and tell the stories of people who have succeeded in the industry as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool.  Alright.  So now when we talk about some of these management issues, one thing we were discussing is that you have lots of experience and see lots of coffee shop owners doing leadership of folks who are at their first job.  Maybe they are interns, maybe they’re in college or they’ve recently graduated.  And so I thought it would be great to really dig into your wisdom on this point.  So maybe you could orient us first of all, how does managing folks in their first job substantially differ from those who have maybe just even one or two or three years under their belt?

Chris Deferio
Well, I think the way it’s different is that the structure under which they’re used to operating is just alien and different.  l like to think about, if they’ve come from a school environment, where there are things set up for them to go to, there are classes – you’re not really having to think about it, in fact you’re part of a group – there’s not a whole lot of individual attention in most cases.
And so by and large I’d say once you’re behind the bar and a lot depends on you individually, there’s kind of this deer-in-the-headlights.  There’s just so much to take in.  It’s not necessarily unique to them, but I think it’s times 10 with somebody who’s not used to being on display and being the focus of the individual attention that a manager has on them, because that manager is responsible for the owner’s business and the business is on the line.  And they understand that responsibility but don’t necessarily know how to function under that weight.  And so, sometimes it does feel like you’re drinking from a firehose and they can act that way.
So, there’s a lot of things that you need to bear in mind when you’re managing somebody who doesn’t have a lot of employment experience.  Even if they’ve had like a summer job, a job that’s a full-time job, even their first quote-unquote “real” job, is quite different.  And so, how you approach them as a manager has to bear that in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I’d love for you to expand a little bit upon, we talk about the deer-in-the-headlights or the overwhelm or the reactions of the new employee.  Could you share a little bit there, in terms of… I imagine some of them are probably jarring and not what you want to see.  So, could you maybe highlight a few of those?  Maybe they’ll be some twinkles of recognition from listeners to say, “Oh, okay, okay.  Maybe I should have a touch more patience with that at first.”

Chris Deferio
Sure.  So, I’d say a good way to recognize this… Or let’s just say a common way to recognize that – you’re dealing with somebody who’s under that kind of situation is that, like I said, deer-in-the-headlights, but in the restaurant industry they call them “pan shakers”, or people who would start cleaning something that doesn’t need to be cleaned; they’re just looking for something to do.
There is just a general lack of awareness, the peripheral awareness.  Even though you’re in a busy cafe, none of it really affects you much.  And it should, and it’s odd that it doesn’t, because there’s so much stimulus going on you don’t know what to focus on.
And so, I think a manager who’s in that situation needs to be able to have a strong hand of guidance on what is it that they should be doing in that moment.  Having a good onboarding process for example is a great way to kind of counteract the confusion and the shock of being in an environment where now we really are relying on you to make this rush of customers work, or this cafe work.

Pete Mockaitis
And so when you say “manager” here, the manager is the person who is the first real job person, kind of working for and reporting to the owner.  Is that how you conceptualize this?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you there.  So indeed, intriguing.  So there’s a whole lot of stimuli, and it seems like folks in that position where they’re unaccustomed to it may just sort of start doing something, even though that something is not at all the right thing.  Any other kind of key symptoms or behaviors you notice?

Chris Deferio
I would say emotional is another one.  In any case where somebody is under that kind of pressure there’s going to be overly emotional responses to things that are just commonplace work-related tasks, that you and I, having been through the ringer maybe for years, or at least some experience, might not take it personally.  But I’d say taking things personally is one of the symptoms that I would see.  It’s like, “Okay, this is…”  They maybe weren’t expecting it.
I know I felt that way when I had my first job, which was in a grocery store just stocking things in freezers and fridges and milk cartons and what not.  The pressure was just so great to perform that you just kind of took everything to heart.  And there’s really no stopping that; it’s almost a rite of passage, I think, when you have your first job.  But where it can go south, I think, is when a manager then takes them taking it personally, personally. [laugh] And then it kind of goes off the rails.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is interesting.  So, could you maybe paint a picture there, in terms of an example, where you’ve seen this happen with folks either in some of the shops that you’ve worked with or consulted for, in terms of making it all come together?

Chris Deferio
Well, okay.  So, I would probably just use an example of when I was a trainer and I had some experience in coffee, when we brought on new baristas.  This was actually an example of one of my failures, in that I was so confident – having some experience I just had too strong of a hand in my management.  But the individual was performing the job okay, but not really to my standards as a manager, and I was kind of arrogant at the time anyway.  But tamping is an example of something we do – we press the coffee down into a filter so that it could be extracted.  And I was noticing that the tamping was off or lopsided so that it wouldn’t extract properly.  And I brought it up in a way that maybe in hindsight wasn’t the greatest, but they took it so personally that…

Pete Mockaitis
“You’ve got a problem with my tamping, bro?”

Chris Deferio
“How could you notice that from where you’re standing?”, or… There was a lot of pushback, and I realized what I had done was I stepped on the only security that they had, because they’d just been trained by the manager at that store.  And what I was doing was coming in and essentially removing the only security that they had, without care for what it would do to the rest of what was built on that foundation.

Pete Mockaitis
Now we say “the only security”, you mean like he’s coming from a perspective of, “Tamping is the one thing that I have nailed.”  Is that what you mean?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  Well, if you call into question parts of what they know to be true, then you might as well be calling into question the entire thing.  So, “If my tamping is off, maybe my milk is off, and if my milk is off, what am I doing here being a barista?  Maybe I was taught wrong.  I’m not ready for this.”  Your mind can kind of go a million miles an hour down the wrong path.  And it all kind of stemmed from a non-empathetic approach to an issue that could have been resolved by some other means that reinforced what they had learned, or added to rather than stripping it away simply to be right.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing.  So I’d love to hear, in retrospect, how would you address this issue, because you can’t have a sub-optimal temp at the end of the day.  Right, Chris?

Chris Deferio
No, I don’t think you can.  In the moment, I either could have… I think this would have been the best way to do it, is to investigate what kind of training the person had, before assuming what they had first.  So if I had questions for the manager as to how much training the person had, I should have asked.  Instead of addressing it with the individual first, I should have just let it go, because by the time I got there they had probably already been making drinks that way for hours, if not days.  And my stepping in in the middle of making drinks for customers is not going to solve it in their mind.  It might solve my personal need to sort of get my fidgety, “Ooh, you’re not doing that right” out there into her world, but it really didn’t accomplish what I wanted it to long-term.
So, I think having a more patient view of that situation and allowing myself to shoulder the burden of having unresolved tension, rather than just kind of chucking that tension right onto what was happening in the moment, if that makes sense.  I, as a manager or a leader, there’s this tension you would have that you want to see people do something right, but sometimes you have to let them do it wrong a little bit longer in order to wait for the right opportunity to show them in a way that’s effective.  And so it forces you to question, “Do I just want to talk, or do I want to affect change?”

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing.  So then, what might be some indicators that this is the right time?

Chris Deferio
I’d say when things are more calm, when people are in a good mood, and when you are not upset.  Because you might be responsible for the bottom line of your company, you have to know yourself well enough to know when you can not sound like a jerk, or be passive-aggressive, or give somebody the feedback, a crap sandwich with the critique and the praise.
There is a bit of self-knowledge that’s needed to know how you sound first of all, and when’s the right time for you to do it calmly.  And then, like I said, when things are calm in the store, when there is a time that talking about technique is brought up, in fact – that’s a way.  Hopefully you have mechanisms or systems of communication in place, where feedback lives, like a one-on-one every week with the manager, or an ongoing training session.  Those are perfect times and require forethought as an operator to say, “You’re going to have these conversations with people, so where do those conversations live?”  They can’t just be invented on the spot; they have to have a place for your peace of mind and the security of the barista.  So, I’d say rather than indicators, maybe just dial back even more and say, “Have I built a system in my shop or my business that allows for a safe space for feedback, both from me to the barista or employee, and from the employee to me, to critique me?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.  Well now, you used the phrase “safe space”, so I am thinking about South Park – that’s the name of the show – where they did this song, “My safe space…”  And I want to touch upon the word “Millennials”.  I guess I am one, but in a previous episode we had Lee Caraher say like 72% of Millennials don’t like the word “Millennial”.  They don’t want to be called a Millennial, because there’s so much baggage and negative associations with it.  So, I’d love it the more that you could be fact-based, experience-based, research-oriented to this.  To what extent is there something real when it comes to the difference in managing Millennials or folks who are fresh out of college?  Are they still Millennials or are they the next one yet?

Chris Deferio
Maybe, and maybe it’s Gen Y, I’m not sure.  Or Gen Y is the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
So what’s real and what’s just a bunch of stuff that people cook up to sell books or to try to stereotype and sort of offload responsibility?

Chris Deferio
Yeah, it’s a good question because we like to categorize.  Part of the human mind is all about, “This goes in this section of my brain, and this goes in the other.”  And if we need to understand people it’s easier to have a sorting mechanism, and so that’s what these names start to become.  And in no other time in history, especially with the rise of the Internet, do we have as much access to articles that kind of form our thinking towards people before we even meet them or know them in reality.
So, the reality of Millennials, I think, is simply that they are young, and I don’t know that there’s that much of a difference outside of the world they interact with.  They’re not not humans, and they have the same drive for success and love and acceptance and to interact with the world around them.  And they have the same idea that they want to change the world the way that any other generation did.  So, I think Millennials as a group have been given a bad rap by people who don’t want to take responsibility for leading Millennials.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Chris Deferio
Yeah, so on the show I had Bruce Tulgan, who’s the author of a book which I think every manager should read.  The book is called It’s Okay to Be the Boss.  I bought that for all of my managers in the store I worked at, and they all agreed it’s a fantastic book, practical.  The author also works for… His company is called Rainmaker Thinking, and they authored this incredible long-term study on the workplace opinion of Millennials toward management.
And what they found is essentially that Millennials want leadership, they want to be told how to succeed in the workplace, and actually are looking for people to, as the book that Bruce wrote says, to be the boss.  And they say in the book that there is an undermanagement epidemic, not a micromanagement one; in other words people are abdicating their responsibility to be leaders within an organization.
And Millennials I think are, just based on this study and my own experience – like I said, they’re people who want to do a good job.  And when somebody says to you, “I want to come in your company and deliver a ton of value, and what do I do, where do I sign up?”, and they’re eager – if you look on that with distain, there’s a lot of issues there.  You need to be prepared to help that person succeed.  So I view Millennials as eager and will not take lack of clarity for an answer.  So the mystery of just figuring it out on your own – hey, we have Google.  That’s gone.  Figuring it out on your own looks more like YouTube than just hacking away at it.
So yeah, Millennials I think have been given a bad rap and they are young people looking to be led, and then to lead themselves.  They want to make a difference in the world and we have an opportunity in jobs like coffee that are historically transient jobs – they’re not the jobs that they’re going to have for the rest of their lives – to shape people for the career that they actually are going to be spending a lot of time in.  So, managing first-time people, first-time employees, especially young ones, as impressionable as they are – they have a ton of energy and they have a ton of vision to contribute to a company if you’re up for the challenge of continuing to actually work in your company.

Pete Mockaitis
So that doesn’t sound unique at all to Millennials, in terms of if you’re young and inexperienced, “Figure it out” isn’t great leadership, management, guidance, at that sort of stage in a person’s development.  I mean you might say “Figure it out” in a nicer way, which was, “Why don’t you take a rough draft at a plan of attack and we’ll sync up in a day?”  That’s maybe a nicer version of “Figure it out.” [laugh] I’m not 100% abdicating my responsibility for getting to the bottom of this thing, but I would like you to take the first approach there.  Well, cool.  So then, you’ve got some takes on how one manages expectations optimally in the first real job environment.

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, managing expectations is a great place to start because as I was just touching on how we as an older generation – myself turning 40 here shortly – have a responsibility to manage ourselves first, so that we can lead others.  And that means if we have expectations of people that are unreasonable and are secretly based on our desire to just not have to do as much as we actually have to, then we need to deal with that so we don’t pass on dysfunction.  In today’s day and age there’s a ton of leadership dysfunction, and leaders in restaurants and coffee bars and politics are under fire.
And so, all eyes are on people who have authority and power, and we need to be able to have some kind of forethought about the people we’re bringing into our organization and stop being surprised by what happens when we bring young people into an organization.  You can’t really be effective as a leader or as a company if you’re constantly just scratching your head and complaining and surprised by something that you knew was going to happen.  So, embrace it, prepare yourself for it, and be the leader that’s necessary for what you’re going to inherit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so the managing expectations there – you’re talking about what it’s fair for you to expect of someone who’s newer, younger, inexperienced from the get-go.

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, they’re going to make mistakes, no doubt, when you onboard somebody.  In coffee for instance a lot of us have labs, and we have labs for a reason – because we don’t want people experimenting on the customer.  Or we have shadow shifts for instance, where you are on with the manager and they are watching you to make sure that you are performing in the critical areas.
However, you don’t want to rob people of their failures; you don’t want people to only do exactly what you say in every case.  You want to see them spill milk or you want to see them kind of strain to figure something out and not just jump in and not let that muscle develop, because then you will never be truly confident in that person’s “a-ha” moment, because they could fake it.  They could just say, “Oh yeah, I understand now”, but when you’re gone, because they didn’t develop the muscle of understanding through failure, then it’s just going to crumble under the pressure, especially if it’s one of their first jobs, like we were talking about earlier.
So, having a lab for another company might look like just an entry level position within the company, where consequences of failure are not dire – you’re not going to pass it on to your big accounts.  But you have somebody there that can walk them through the process and explain, as failures are made, how to do the job from A to Z.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s great.  Don’t rob them of their failures – nice turn of a phrase there.  And so, when you say a “lab”, can you help me visualize?  I’m imagining a lab coat and a white room and…

Chris Deferio
It’s exactly right, that’s what we do.  We actually recreate, so the speak, the coffee bar.  So it’s like a micro coffee bar, and sometimes it’s behind glass and other times it’s just hidden in the back corner.  It’s not usually the prettiest place but it’s got an espresso machine and a brewer, it’s got a couple of tables, and you schedule sessions with baristas when they are new employees, or existing employees that need work on one particular area.  You schedule some time in the lab to work on your tamping, to work on understanding a particular policy.  A lot of meetings are held in labs.
So, a lab for a coffee bar I think is critical, and the equivalent in any organization like where does the training take place, helps kind of anchor the idea, like, “Yeah, I’m here to learn right now in this space.  And we can just bang around in here and nothing is going to happen in the outside world, except I’m going to learn and bring what I learn to that outside world.”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting when you describe the lab, it conjures to mind almost like a movie montage, like there’s music playing and someone is failing repeatedly and spilling it all over themselves.  And then the wise mentor is frustrated but sticks it out until there’s a maestro coming out on the other side.

Chris Deferio
Yeah, this is very much like Rocky.  Ivan Drago versus Rocky lifting logs in a log house.  It’s an approximation.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great.  Okay, so we talked about not robbing people of their failures, managing the expectations, giving some protection so there’s not dire consequences if things go awry.  I’d like you to also kind of unpack a bit, you’ve got some takes on when it comes to the follow-through.  Not just saying, “Hey, do this”, but what comes after the “Hey, do this”?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  This is a super hard one, and it is one of the things that erodes trust the most between direct reports and managers, or baristas and managers, however you want to phrase it.  When you tell somebody to do something and they do it – let’s say they do it well.  And nothing happens, except they do it well and they know, but nobody sees it – that is going to demoralize the individual, because nobody is there to see their victories.  I think you get some satisfaction out of it, for sure.
Yeah.  So if you are on the bar and you are not having follow-through from your manager, what that looks like is like you said – just “Do this” via text message.  You get a text message or an email that says to do it this way.  You need to have the presence of the manager there to follow up with you in order to either correct you or praise you, to guide you or affirm you.
And the present leadership is a good phrase for this.  A shop I worked at used the phrase “present leadership”, because often times what we have is a secondary culture form around this abdication of leadership to follow through.  So, for us it happens on closing shifts, when management is home – they try to get themselves on a 9:00 to 5:00 schedule, and then the closing shift is there by themselves.  And what you’ll find is that it’s kind of like a different culture, and they don’t have the kind of contact with the leadership as their counterparts in the morning do.  And the difference is that the people in the morning get the benefit of getting to see the manager every day, so there is a natural built-in opportunity for follow-through.
You can’t really judge an employee’s performance if you haven’t observed their performance in a consistent way.  So when you give them a raise and you tell them they’re doing a good job, but they know that you haven’t actually followed through and seen how they’re doing, if they need help, and been there along the process – they know you don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s hollow.  And so you erode trust, they don’t trust you when you say “Good job”, because they know you haven’t even seen them do their job.
That’s part of what I mean by “follow-through”.  For managers who really want to be there for their employees, it’s going to take a lot of work upfront, but you build momentum in the future so where you might have to schedule yourself to come in during a time where you normally don’t come in to the store – maybe it’s a closing shift for coffee bar examples – just to make yourself known, to ask how things are going, see if there’s any questions, observe them in action.  Do that for a week or so, two or three times a week.  And that person will get the drift that you are concerned about their progress and you’re building rapport with that individual and following through on the thing that you said they should do or how they should do it, etcetera, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting.  It sounds like this sounds pretty, I guess, fundamental and just, “But of course leaders should do that.”  And yet at the same time, I think there is a healthy opposition force that would say, “Oh my gosh, Chris, that is just too much work.  Why do I have to do all this handholding?  Come on, we’re grownups here.”

Chris Deferio
Well, yeah.  Grownups who can plan ahead of time, like we said manage your expectations – well, part of the expectation is that you’re going to have to spend some extra time with people who are new.  And I think the thing that really throws people is the minutiae of their job as a manager, because so much of our job in management has to do with reacting to situations and putting out fires.
And if you never really get that under control and don’t have control of your own schedule, keeping on human relationships on top of just ordering these other things for the office and responding to emails from people who may or may not want to buy your coffee or your product – there’s no room left for the people that you hired.  And there’s this weird relief – you come in and they’re doing fine; you’re like, “Oh hey, how are you doing?  How are you doing?  Good?  Are they taking care of you over here?  Great.”  And then you just walk away.
Now you’ve abdicated your responsibility as a leader to the people they’re working with, who have become the sort of surrogate managers for you because you can’t get it together with your schedule.  So it all kind of comes back to the leadership and what you expect from yourself.  It all kind of comes back to leadership having their stuff together, so that they can actually help other people form their careers and their understanding and their skillsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that example you used, in terms of, “How are you doing?  Are they taking good care of you?” – that’s an example of abdication.  Can you expand on that?

Chris Deferio
Yeah, so not in all cases, I think, but I see it a lot of times in coffee bars, where you throw people on to a bar and you hope that the most senior barista there will kind of show them the ropes – show them all this stuff about the POS and show them this other thing over here too, and, “By the way, I just remembered, can you show them this?”  Now, that might be delegation if it’s done with clear intent and structure, and always done that way, if that’s purposeful, but often times it’s just Plan B or Plan C when it comes to what the manager maybe ideally wanted or found out that they don’t have enough time to spend to walk this person through the POS system, the register.
So, what I say is advocation I mean naturally when you’re entering into an office or a service industry or whatever it is, the manager is the person you understand to be the source of knowledge, the one who is going to help you understand how things are, at least at first.  But when you never get that and they’re just the person that has you sign your tax forms, and then they just kind of throw you on bar but then show up at your review, it just feels like, “Why are you even here?  My coworker should be reviewing me, because they’re the ones who taught me, corrected me, were there with me during that really crazy rush, where we all burned ourselves.”  There’s rapport, and managers often times miss out on building that rapport, because they unintentionally, I’d say, in most cases, give away their opportunity to build those relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good.  And I kind of finally want to get your take on when it comes to retail or coffee environment, there are times where you mentioned the rush.  In a realm of crowds and chaos and a whole lot happening real fast, what are some pro tips just for keeping your cool and your sanity and focus about you with all the stimuli?

Chris Deferio
Two things.  One – have workflow already in place.  If you own a bar, if you manage a system where you have to deliver a result, you have to have a workflow.  And that workflow has to actually be taking into account different situations that you could come up against.  For us, let’s say you have a menu of 15 items with four different variations on those items, okay?  So, you’ve got to practice all of the ways that people can alter those drinks, and maybe there’s ways that they’re going to… How is it going to be in the worst scenario and what do we do?  What’s the plan?
Too many people just cross that bridge when they come to it, and if it’s on fire they don’t cross it at all.  The workflow is a critical one.  And that was one of our first episodes actually on the show Keys To The Shop, with my friend Ryan Soeder on mastering workflow.
The other part is managing yourself emotionally.  You need to detach, essentially.  Not in a robotic way, but if you’re working the workflow, if you’re working behind the bar and you have a line out the door and you know you’re doing your best – there’s no reason, logically, to stress out.  You can’t go any faster, and everybody understands that.  And they keep coming every day, so they know.  They see, they have eyes, they understand what’s going on.
And somehow what happens when we forget that – we try to rush the process, we don’t fall into a rhythm.  And when we do that, we don’t do the other thing also – I had a third – is, communication.  Our communication can either come from a place of fear and insecurity, or it can come from a place of, “We’re in this together, we’re doing the best we can and we’re going to lean into the pressure rather than trying to run away from it.”
I’ll give an example.  There are times when I have personally been really stressed out on the register, and when I’m that way what I like to do is… I don’t know how to describe it, but I just kind of smile to myself and I overexaggerate my hospitality as a way of reminding myself what I’m doing here.  I don’t go goofy or anything, but I turn an inward switch.  And I think it’s important for people to figure out, “What’s my approach to the chaotic workplace environment and how will I pull myself away from that, observe it as an outsider, so to speak?  And not become out of control emotionally, but lean into the fact that this is what’s going on and it’s not going to define us.  We’re not going to let the shift run us; we’re going to run the shift.”  That’s a good way to just remember it.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely.  Well, Chris, tell me – anything else you want to make sure to highlight before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  I just want to encourage everybody who works with young people and transient employees – it kind of goes hand in hand – that they are training up a future generation of leaders and owners and managers, people who will influence the course of history.  And it sounds really dramatic to say it that way, but every person who you know who you read a biography about who’s inspirational, worked at a deli, worked at a restaurant or a coffee bar at some point.
And maybe not everyone, but they had jobs that were kind of what they might consider menial.  But have had lessons that shaped them in the dish pit, in the mop closet, in a one-on-one with a manager; kind of like your favorite teacher in elementary school.  So our responsibility to actually take up a mantle of leadership and lead young people well in these jobs is really, really critical.  And it’s all about relationships and allowing yourself to be vulnerable, while at the same time being a strong leader that will help shape the next generation.

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

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, I think my favorite quote comes from David Whyte. David Whyte is an English poet and I think the quote is, “You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.  Give up all other worlds except the one in which you belong.” So his book, if I could recommend it, is called Crossing the Unknown Sea, and it’s kind of a philosophy on vocation as a way of becoming, a journey into meaning through your work.  And so I really, highly recommend that book.

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

Chris Deferio
I don’t have a… Okay, tool would be just pen and paper, honestly.  I don’t thrive in digital environments as much as I thought I would, and I do have things.  I love my high-end drawing pens and special graph paper notebooks for organizing my thoughts.  I’m not full into bullet journaling or anything, but I do like to braindump onto paper and organize myself that way.  And sometimes it makes it into my reminders on my phone or something like that, but more often than not I’m trying to write something down.

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

Chris Deferio
So, I guess a favorite habit of mine, besides coffee, would be – which is a great habit, it’s very healthy for you – I try to get up early.  It’s something I started doing a couple of years ago, actually started to try to adopt a way to kind of embrace the day.  Now I know this is not unique to me, but when I started doing it, it really turned my world upside down that I could actually start my day well by just getting up early and stretching and drinking a lot of water and thinking, including things like morning pages is a huge one, stream-of-consciousness, because I don’t get a lot of time, especially at a coffee bar, to create and to express.  You’re always reacting to outside situations.  So it’s nice to have some space where you can set your trajectory internally, and then embrace the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And tell me, is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get folks quoting yourself back to you?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  There is something that I used to say in talks and I think I should bring it back, and that is that the customer has been hurt in the past by coffee.  The customer has had some kind of a traumatic experience in a coffee bar and they bring that experience in with them.  So, we have to approach them from a position of owning the stuff that our industry sort of did to them and earn back their trust.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so intrigued.  I can’t recall an experience of my own.  Are we talking about hot spills, or what do you mean?

Chris Deferio
I mean emotionally, like you go into a specialty coffee shop and often times what you find is maybe the barista is not as welcoming as you thought they should be for the price point of the coffee.  We promise a special experience a lot of times and when somebody walks in, the expectation is set so high by the marketing that the actual reality of the experience is disappointing.  And so, knowing that people are sort of accustomed to dealing with disappointment when it comes to something that’s so hyped as specialty coffee with all these latte art flowery drinks and what not, we kind of have to approach it with some empathy and realize that A) it’s not personal, B) let’s make that up to you; let’s make this the best experience that you could possibly have.

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

Chris Deferio
Well, I would definitely recommend they go to KeysToTheShop.com, and the podcast the same name on iTunes.  It’s just KeysToTheShop on Instagram and Twitter as well.  And those are the best places.  My email is chris@keystotheshop.com.

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

Chris Deferio
Be patient with yourself, be patient with others, and take a look at the big picture on a regular basis.  And learn to be happy with the work that you’ve already done and hopeful for the work that you’re going to accomplish.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome.  Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking this time.  Lots of fun.  I wish you tons of luck in your coffee adventures, and you are a champion in more ways than just latte art!

Chris Deferio
I really appreciate that.  Well, thanks for having me on the show.  It was really fun.

Apr 16
0

287: Establishing Motivation, Intention, and Boundaries Like a Boss with Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon say: "Do the work is what happens between the wanting and the having."

Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon of Being Boss talk setting intentions and the importance of boundaries.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The benefits of creating monthly intentions
  2. How to set boundaries – and stick to them
  3. How to have healthy dialogue with your boss

About and Kathleen and Emily

Kathleen Shannon and Emily Thompson, self-proclaimed “business besties” and hosts of the top-ranked podcast “Being Boss,” know what it takes to launch a business, do the work, and be boss in work and life. Both successful independent business owners, Emily and Kathleen started the podcast in January of 2015 to talk shop and share their combined expertise with other creative entrepreneurs.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Emily Thompson & Kathleen Shannon Interview Transcript

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

Kathleen Shannon
Pete, we are so excited to be here.

Emily Thompson
For sure. We are ready to tell people how to be awesome at their job.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, you’ve been doing it for a while and you do it in style with fun. Your branding – well, that’s what you do. It’s so awesome with regard to the colors and the photography. It says boss through and through.

Kathleen Shannon
Our brand board was like Lisa Frank, me, The Craft, like that witchie ‘90s movie, basically.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say it that way, it kind of makes me look at the purple smoke in a different way.

Kathleen Shannon
Do you see it in a whole new way? Like, there’s going to be a unicorn flying through, and a Tarot reader, and a crystal ball.

Pete Mockaitis
That is funny.

Kathleen Shannon
They might make it rain.

Emily Thompson
Definitely make it rain.

Pete Mockaitis
Nice double meaning there.

Kathleen Shannon
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I much appreciate it.

Kathleen Shannon
I’m glad that you got that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, cool. Obviously I’ve got to get into so much good stuff. I learned, Kathleen, you shared that you like to work in complete silence. What’s the story here?

Kathleen Shannon
I know, so you asked me one thing that people might not know about me and as Emily knows and as our listeners at Being Boss know, I’m kind of an open book. I’m probably talking about things I shouldn’t be talking about. But the thing I think that people don’t know about me is that I work in complete silence. I definitely give off this vibe that I’m this crazy, cool, creative. At least, that’s a vibe I hope I’m giving off.

But I find myself working in complete silence because whenever it comes down to getting focused and doing the work, I find myself even listening to ambient music, tuning it out, so it becomes this extra distraction that my brain is having to work around in order to do the work. I think it’s just maybe the one thing that people don’t know about me is it is dead quiet. You can hear a pin drop whenever I’m working.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. How do you enforce quiet around you? Isn’t noise just going to happen? I shopped around at length to find a sound-blocking door. I totally resonate with this. What are your tricks?

Kathleen Shannon
Well, so I do work from home. My kiddo is in full-time daycare. My husband is at his day job. I am completely alone during the day at my home office. This is part of the reason why I decided to work from home and not go to a co-working space.

I do have an agency. I live outside of Detroit and I have an agency located in Oklahoma City where all of my partners and employees work. I did build out in that space two little office spaces with doors and sound proofing for podcasting and that sort of thing. But I have a spray bottle to keep my cats away from me and that’s about it. That’s how I enforce it.

It’s just like in the decisions I’ve made along the way, I suppose. At some point every creative does kind of have to decide, like, “Oh, am I lonely being all by myself at my house or should I go to a co-working space, should I go to a coffee shop?”

I certainly have the tools. I used to work in an open office space before I started working for myself, so I can go to a coffee shop and tune things out, but I get so focused then that it’s almost like silence, where you would have to get eye-contact with me to make sure that I’m listening to you, like I’m that focused on my work.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. When my wife comes in sometimes I’ve got the headphones and the noise cancelling on and maybe even ear plugs underneath the headphones straight up.

Kathleen Shannon
You’re not messing around.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll like be startled, like, “Oh, there you are.” I’m resonating. Thank you. Tell me, Emily, how do you find yourself in the work groove?

Emily Thompson
I’m pretty similar where I used to listen to music. The first time Kathleen told me that she worked in complete silence, I was shocked, like, similar where I felt she was probably just like dancing around her office listening to Beyoncé all day, every single day.

Whenever she told me she worked in complete silence, I was super shocked because I, at that point, liked to listen to music while I worked but I found myself as, I’ve guess grown in my entrepreneurial endeavors where I’m responsible for all things, this sincere need to get super focused. I can only do that when it’s pretty quiet.

Now, I do home school my child. Actually, hear her in the kitchen right now banging forks and plates around. I’m trying not to get too terribly annoyed at. So I do have to drown out a whole lot of noise, but I’ve kind of gotten used to it. But otherwise, like pretty quiet. I’m not listening to music.

Here’s a funny tidbit though. I used to develop websites. That’s what I did as I began growing my online career. I do code best when I’m watching TV.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing.

Kathleen Shannon
I was about to say that too, Emily. I feel like our jobs have changed, where you used to be coding, I used to be doing a lot more graphic design and busting out that Bezier pen tool, any designers listening know what that is, and this kind of redundant work where you can listen to music or watch TV.
That’s my favorite, are days whenever I have to do some design and I’ll sit down in front of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and just knock some stuff out.

Kathleen Shannon
Now we do so much writing that I feel like it requires a different kind of focus where it’s harder to drown out those outside noises and it’s harder to get that focus with background noise happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Yeah. Well, thank you for setting the stage here and could you maybe continue that. But first, I want to make sure – I first learned about your show from one of our mutual listeners. It’s Beth in Baltimore. Can we just talk about how great she is?

Kathleen Shannon
Yeah. Beth, high five.

Emily Thompson
Thanks for spreading the Being Boss love for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Shout out accomplished. Tell us, what’s Being Boss all about?

Kathleen Shannon
Being Boss started as two business besties, that would be me and Emily. We were really craving that connection and conversation, so, as we mentioned, we’re working alone out of our homes, sometimes in complete silence. That can get kind of lonely.

So we became creative peers and colleagues whenever we were hiring each other for the work that we were doing. Beyond that, we started to connect on a more friend level. We would hop on a video call and really talk shop.

After a year or two of over Skype talking about what was working, what wasn’t working, our conversations were getting deeper. We were talking about real numbers, like sharing money, which is kind of taboo.

We were sharing our biggest secrets as far as business secrets, the kind of stuff that people like to keep to themselves. We were sharing insights as to how we were juggling work and life and time management and growing families while growing careers.

Emily was even there when I was like, “Okay, I’m thinking about starting a family. How am I going to make this work?” She’s like, “Okay, you need to automate. You need to get some systems in place and you’ve got to put that kid in daycare.” Well, that’s not entirely true because Emily homeschools, but I definitely had to do the daycare. Anyway, all this to say, we were having these conversations.

One day Emily sent me an email saying, “Hey, you know those business bestie conversations we’re having, we need to hit publish on them. We need to start a podcast. Other creatives are craving this kind of conversation and probably feel just as alone as we did and we could be their work buddies.”

Our podcast, Being Boss, it really did catch on pretty quickly and we became the go-to podcast for other creatives and aspiring entrepreneurs who wanted to hear some insights and real talk about what it takes to do the work. ‘Do the work’  has essentially become our mantra because we all know making a living doing what you love isn’t always easy and it takes hard work. That’s the conversation that we have been having for the past three years.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. But I’ve seen several Facebook ads that tell me if I just follow this bulletproof system I can make millions of dollars online easily working from home.

Emily Thompson
Yeah, yeah and how has that worked out for you?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s like all the ads I get on Facebook. I guess like some of the wrong things that get me targeted for that.

Emily Thompson
Yeah. There are so many people in the online space or not even in the online space, who have laid out these blueprints or plans or mapped out success in a way that if you follow them, X, Y, Z, you’ll get the thing that you want.

Kathleen and I, we’ve done some of those probably back in the day, like here’s how you build a six-figure launch or whatever it is. We quickly realized that that’s not how the world works. It only took us a time or two to realize that’s not how things go down.

That’s really what a lot of those beginning conversations were, were here’s the thing that I tried. Here’s what worked and didn’t work. You do it, find out what works for you, and then let’s share back and forth.

We realized that everyone’s success is defined differently and therefore the path to your success is always going to be different from someone else’s. That’s really been the core of what Being Boss is, is define success on your terms and then take the steps that you have to take to get there. It won’t look like anyone else’s journey; it will look like your journey and that’s what makes it all the more special.

Those blueprints and things, they may work for three or four people, which is great for those people, but buying into those things is a mistake when what you really need to do is define success on your own and make it do the way you need to make it do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said.

Kathleen Shannon
One of the things I always think about are working actors, like those actors that have tons of jobs but you never see them as the lead role, but they’re probably living a pretty nice life. I kind of think of us as that as well. We are working creatives who are in it with you. We’re not those million dollar overnight successes, but we’re going to show you that you don’t have to be a million-dollar overnight success to do the work and do what you love.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that. That reminds me of the documentary, maybe you’ve seen it. It was pretty engaging. It’s called That Guy … Who Was in That Thing. It’s all about those actors.

Kathleen Shannon
I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Interviewee after interviewee are like, “I kind of recognize that guy.”

Kathleen Shannon
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
“He was in that thing.” He sort of talks about the struggle. I love how you talked about defining success on your own terms as opposed to sort of just knee-jerk reacting to, “Hey, quit your job. Leave the rat race,” because for the most part, my listeners enjoy their jobs most of the time or are actively trying to find a switch and are finding some fulfillment and fun and flourishing – oh, alliteration – in the world of being employed at a place as opposed to being the sort of the owner CEO.

But, nonetheless, you talk about boss in many ways as a mindset in your upcoming book, Being Boss. Could you unpack that a little bit?

Emily Thompson
Absolutely. I mean for us it all starts with mindset, with the sort of foundational belief that you can do whatever you want. You have the right and ability to define things the way you want them to be and then you have the ability to go make it happen for yourself.

If you don’t believe those things, it’s not going to happen for you. It’s really important to get into that right frame of mind in order to tackle all the challenges that come at you, whether that’s creating your career or building your life and doing those in a way that you find fulfilling.

It’s being confident. It’s seeking out motivation and inspiration. It’s committing to setting and working towards really big ass goals or maybe not really big goals if you’re not a super big goal kind of person.

We also believe that a lot of it comes into trusting yourself, trusting that you’re going to make the right decision and that you’re going to be able to show up and do the work and get the thing. It all starts with that foundational mindset that you can do what it is that you want to do as long as you show up and do it.

Kathleen Shannon
Yeah, whenever I think about the boss mindset and all of the people that we’ve interviewed and even in our early conversations with each other, it’s this idea of self-reliance, trusting that you’re not going to have all the answers, but that you can absolutely figure it out.

Emily talked about trusting that you can make the right decision, but I’m going to take it even a step further and trusting that no matter what decision you make, right or wrong, trusting that it’s going to get you where you need to go. That definitely is that primary foundation that we always start with is mindset. Part of that is really understanding your values as well.

This can be applied for people who are working for themselves or working in the context of an organization or a company where they are an employee. It’s really understanding what you value and bringing intentions and action to those values so that you are living them out not only in your life but in your work.

Pete Mockaitis
I am loving that. As you say values, you’re firing off some connections for me, thinking back to my Coaches Training Institute training back in the day. How would you define a value and can you give us a couple of examples of what a value is and what’s not a value, like you said that is a value, but that doesn’t quite sound like a value?

Emily Thompson
Sure. I mean values are sort of the foundational beliefs that you sort of build your own characters. For me, I value freedom where whatever I am going out into my work or even my life, like that’s something I’m consistently seeking, it’s something that I value seeing in other people. Wherever those opportunities are presented to me, those are more intriguing than the ones that aren’t.

For me, something that I value is freedom. Everyone has values, whether you value kindness or assertiveness. Kathleen, feel free to jump in with any additional one.

Kathleen Shannon
Yeah, so one of my biggest values is authenticity. I know that’s a word that’s being really used a lot lately, but I can’t think of a better word for it. It’s one that resonates with me.

This is another thing whenever it comes to values is choose words that resonate with you on that kind of cellular level because there are a lot of words that mean the same things and so once you start to unpack your value, really explore all the words that are similar to that value or synonyms with that value.

Mine is authenticity and that is really, whoever I unpack that a little bit, it’s being who you are 100% of the time. And as I’ve gotten a little bit older and hopefully wiser, I realize that being who you are 100% of the time takes a lot of self-awareness and it takes a lot of questioning and curiosity. I would also say being who you are 100% of the time and seeking out who that is.

For me, anything I create – I use my values as a guidepost for making those hard decisions. I think that decision making is one of the hardest things whenever it comes to being your own boss or even making tough decisions about if you’re working a day job, whether or not to leave or to switch careers or to switch companies.

For me, I run every single decision I have to make through the question is this going to help my listeners, readers, whoever is consuming or engaging with me in any way be who they are 100%. If the answer is no, I’m not going to do it. If the answer is yes, alright, let’s go. For me and Emily too, we both use values as a way to really set boundaries in our business and to really draw that line between what we’re willing to do and what we aren’t willing to do.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s so good. That point about thinking about what resonates at the cellular level and thinking through some synonyms. Because I might say integrity. I’d think we’d all agree, yes, that’s important. Integrity is good. But for me, if I think about synonyms, I think about count-on-able, which is a little weird way to articulate it.

Kathleen Shannon
Nice word.

Pete Mockaitis
But it resonates more. I want to be someone that can be counted upon as opposed to, “Oh boy, that flake.” You know?

Kathleen Shannon
Yeah, totally.

Pete Mockaitis
It just resonates more and I think it’s powerful in terms of making them all the more real as opposed to I guess – and exciting as opposed to just sort of obligatory, like, “Yes, I should do that because that’s a value,” as opposed to, “Oh, this is how I roll, so I’m fired up about it.”

Kathleen Shannon
Oh yeah. It should absolutely be something that you’re fired up about. This is a monthly practice for us, if not daily. But every month Emily and I set intentions. Sometimes we do use the word value and intention interchangeably, but the way that we like to think about it is that intentions help you bring actions to your values.

We’ll set intentions every month. I think what was mine last month was to rally. Another word for that could have been reliable, like I want to be really reliable this month, but I really wanted to rally and bring enthusiasm. For me it had this whole other kind of energy beyond reliability that really resonated with me.

We like to also do this on a monthly basis to explore new values and to really test some out and see what sticks and see where we can work on our own character by bringing in more of these intentions into kind of a practice in our personal lives and in our business.

Pete Mockaitis
Those intentions, that is powerful and one of our best episodes was How to Have a Good Day with Caroline Web. It’s so powerful. When you set an intention, all sorts of things go off in your brain in terms of what opportunities you notice and the decisions you choose to make in each of those opportunities. It’s a little thing, but it really has profound cascading ripples that go down when you’re living life.

Emily Thompson
Absolutely. I think the most I ever sort of got out of intentions or I guess the time that I realized they were probably so powerful, several years after – Kathleen and I sort of had this intention practice for a couple of years now. We share them with each other. We hold each other accountable. We’re always cracking jokes about having adopted the other one’s intention or whatever it may be.

I was listening to the Making Oprah podcast. One of the episodes of that podcast was when Oprah decided to start adopting an intention practice. She made her entire team at Oprah do it. Everything they did had to be based on some sort of intention. There had to be a good reason for doing everything that they did and how much of her sort of life and success she has placed on this adoption of an intention setting practice.

I was like, “Well, if Oprah can do it and be Oprah, then this has to be super powerful. It gave me a whole other level of appreciation for this practice that Kathleen and I have sort of kind of accidently fell into but we definitely see how profound and life changing and business- and career-changing it can be.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. I love it. I’d like to get maybe a little bit even more sort of tactical into the day-in, day-out in terms of if someone is in a job, what are some of your top tips for being more boss like or some top boundaries that might make great sense to set right away?

Kathleen Shannon
Oh, I’ve got one.

Emily Thompson
Yes, ma’am.

Kathleen Shannon
I do. I do. This is to stop checking your email in the evenings and on weekends.

Pete Mockaitis
There it is.

Emily Thompson
Yeah.

Kathleen Shannon
That’s it. It’s funny because whenever we were writing our book and running the first draft by our publisher, our editor said, “Hey, what about emails? How do you pry yourself away from your email?” This is something that Emily and I do not have a problem with. We are not slaves to our email. I think it is because of some of those early foundational boundaries that we set in place. It’s just kind of a non-issue. We forgot that some people might even have an issue with that.

We really thought it out and I think that this applies to anything though, anything that is capturing your attention that you don’t want to be giving. I think that email is a huge one.

Really tactical, turning off the alerts on your phone for email. It is not a text message. Don’t open your computer. You don’t have to check your email. I think that this can be hard too because a lot of it is setting those boundaries with your coworkers and that can be really tricky.

But one of my favorite mantras is ‘it’s only as weird as you make it,’ right? If you can be strong enough to set this boundary and just say, “No, it’s actually more weird to check your email in the evenings and weekends,” then you can just own it. That’s a big part of being boss is just owning who you are and owning that time.

Another thing that I do and I’ve been doing this since I’ve had a … is scheduling time for myself on my calendar and literally putting in a meeting on my Google calendar and pretending as if it’s the most important meeting of the day because so often we treat our deadlines and our client meetings with more importance than our meetings.

For me I’m scheduling every day my daily workout. I’ve been doing this since I’ve had a day job. I have a kid and I can still squeeze it in.

One of the things that Emily and I are constantly talking about is your to-do list will fill up with as much time as you give it, so I just give it a little bit less time and I prioritize myself and I find that I’m more productive whenever I do that. I would say scheduling time for yourself on your calendar is another really great boundary that you can literally see that boundary.

Then also looking at your calendar can help you see what you value and if what you value and where your intentions are aren’t being reflected in your schedule, it’s time to update something.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Emily, more.

Emily Thompson
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m demanding.

Emily Thompson
Right. We have this little exercise that we have people do occasionally, I even think it’s in the book, where we tell people to write their own sort of employee handbook for themselves.

If you are an employee, you have an employee handbook, but it probably – actually, I think number one is actually read your employee handbook if you haven’t already, if you’re not super familiar with it, to really see where the lines are already drawn because those boundaries are so important.

If you have a boss who’s overstepping those boundaries or if you have a coworker who is trying to nudge you into showing up too early or staying too late, too often or whatever it may be, knowing what the employee handbook already says, can be super helpful for helping you draw those boundaries.

But I also like the exercise of creating your own employee handbook, like what is not outlined in that employee handbook that you need to outline for yourself and whether that is stretch your communication boundaries or making sure you’re giving yourself an extra 15-minute moment in the afternoon to regroup so that you can really give the rest of your day the best you’ve got.

Defining some extra rules for yourself so that you can really show up and do the best work that you can do.

Pete Mockaitis
I love this. I’m just sort of imagining how it can play out in practice in terms of with the email if there’s resistance like, “No, I can’t.” I think you can just have some candid honest conversations, like, “Hey, I’m trying to unplug and be more present to my family, so I’d really appreciate it if something super urgent that you’d give me a call or text message if it’s in the evening time,” and there you go. It’s kind of hard to override that.

Kathleen Shannon
You know what? Unless you’re a doctor, unless you are saving lives, then at that point you’re also on call and getting paid for that. There is no emergency. Emily used to deal with this a lot with launching websites. People act like that is a life or death situation and it just isn’t. Maybe this is some tough love here.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Keep it coming.

Kathleen Shannon
I don’t want anyone texting me either or calling me. I don’t even want them to have my phone number.

Emily Thompson
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s looking at the points in your work where there is pain and trying to define your way out of that pain. If you are getting text messages from your boss and you don’t want text messages from your boss, tell your boss to stop texting you or whatever it may be, maybe it’s a coworker or whatever the case may be.

Those boundaries are super important. They keep you really good at your work and not resentful of the relationships that you have at work.

I also want to point out here that people will only take your boundaries as seriously as you do. If you say, “I won’t be emailing on the weekends anymore,” but you’re sliding out emails on the weekend, then no one’s going to respect those boundaries. You have to hold those to the highest standards as you set them and people will follow suit.

I’ve had people ask me before, “Your employees or the people you collaborate with, do they have issues with your email policies?” Because Kathleen and I are not emailing outside of regular 9 to 5 business hours and people would assume that the people we work with struggle with that or have issue with it.

What we’ve actually found is that people respect us more and they definitely respect those boundaries because we know what we need to do to get the job done and that does not mean responding to an email at 9 PM. We’ll be there at 9 AM to respond and you’ll get us fresh and ready to go. We’ll have really great relationships in the life outside of work as well. It really only holistically makes the entirety of our efforts better by putting those boundaries in place.

Kathleen Shannon
Okay, I want to mention that Emily has been her own boss like forever and I do come from an agency world where I did have a boss. If any of your listeners are like, “Oh my gosh, there’s no way I can tell my boss like, ‘Sorry, I’m not responding,’” because I know that that can be tricky. I think for me the hardest thing is what you don’t say.

You can respond to the text or to the email on Monday morning at 8 AM or whatever your working hours are. That’s a more subtle clue as to here are the times you can expect me to respond.

Then I also think that being really fully present and working your ass off while you’re at work and really staying focused means that you’re going to get more done in that time and you’re going to be more present for your co-workers and your boss and whoever else during that time, that they’ll start to see like, “Oh, maybe this actually works, this whole work/life being intentional in all the places kind of thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
I appreciate that you brought that into real experience if folks are having some resistance to this notion. I think I can think of a person, Kelsey, who told me just that. I was like, “Oh, you’re consulting, is that really draining you?” She’s like, “You know what? I just kind of told people how I work best and it works.” It was almost like, “Whoa, you can do that?”

I’d love it if you could maybe bring in some additional experiences from maybe your listeners or those you’ve interacted with who are in jobs who have had kind of a case study or a success with this.

Kathleen Shannon
We talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. But one thing I was going to say as Emily was sharing earlier with writing your own employee handbook, one of the things I have found to be really helpful in my own business is creating my own policies and saying things like, “Hey, it’s not my policy.” I’m just going to keep using email as an example since we’re there, but this could apply to a lot of things.

Like, “Hey, it’s not my policy to work for free,” or, “It’s not my policy to email on the weekends.” I wonder if there’s a way that if you are working a day job, like really think about your own policies and even using that verbiage to go with your boundaries might be really helpful for you.

I am married to a guy who has a day job. It’s been stretching him recently and it’s been kind of tricky navigating because you want to please the people that you work with, you want to be a good employee, you want to show that you’re enthusiastic and that you’re in it and that you’re a team member, but you also have to show them that you are a responsible parent or you’re a responsible husband and you’ve got more obligations or even if you don’t have kids or a wife or any of that, you do have a life outside of work.

I think that a good thing whenever it comes to that that you can do is kind of blend – like instead of this work/life balance and separation, is blend a little bit of it, so maybe even sharing with your coworkers what you’re doing outside of work and really just setting the stage and saying, “Hey, I’m going to go pick up my kid,” or, “I’m going to go hiking on the weekend.” I think whenever you can do that, it can help them get a sense of who you are outside of work and make them respect that time even more.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I’ve noticed that often, other professionals will have sort of a respect or awe or admiration for, “Well, good for you. I’d really like to do that myself.”

Sometimes if it’s kind of heavy, what you’re dealing with, like, “Hey, you know what? My mom is sick so it is really important to me to be able to spend some extra time because we don’t know how much time we have,” or there’s a hospital or even with the hiking example. It’s like, “I find that I am so much more brilliantly refreshed and creative at work if I’m able to do this,” so everybody wins if this works out.

Kathleen Shannon
Right. I want to point out here that the key here is communication. It’s talking about what it is that you’re doing and how it is that it helps you be better at your job.

I can’t speak a lot to having conversations with people who have day jobs, but I do know that as a boss of people who I’m providing their day job, we talk about those kinds of things all the time. I do prompt a lot of it because I do understand how that makes for a much healthier work environment for all of us, but they also bring those sorts of things to be.

I’m super cognizant of the fact that there are ways in which people are more efficient and more effective and those are the sorts of things that I want to nurture.

I recently had one of our employees, who’s actually a contractor, come to us recently and say, “I think that I would be more effective if I were to focus at being boss on Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and leaving Thursdays and Fridays open for other endeavors that I’m working on.” I was like, “Great. That’s absolutely fantastic. We can adjust some things to make sure that we’re only relying on you on those three days,” and it wasn’t an issue.

It was clear communication. If she had stopped showing up on Thursday and Friday or was only half putting in the work on any of the days, that would have had a negative effect on what it is that we’re trying to build together. But it’s just that direct and clear concise communication that is appreciated and effective and allows us all to move forward and creates an organization where we’re all working better for it.

I think very often, even in large organizations, people think that their efforts don’t affect everyone or that their hike on the weekend isn’t going to make anyone’s job better but their own, but the truth is that it affects everything. You’re a part of a larger system and the more you can really give to that part whether it’s your communication or your undivided attention or your best self because you took that hike, the better off everyone is going to be for it.

Pete Mockaitis
I love this stuff. Thank you. To shift gears, I know you’ve got some great wisdom in the realm of confidence and dealing with fraudy feelings. What are some of your pro tips there?

Kathleen Shannon
Oh, I’ve got one. I love it whenever I need to cultivate confidence or overcome what we call fraudy feelings, which is kind of imposter syndrome, is to throw a dinner party. For me this is kind of calling on my inner mentors. I pretend as if I’m hosting a dinner party with these people who can give me boss advice and really guide me in this super mentored way into where I need to be going.

If my dinner party includes Beyoncé, Neil deGrasse Tyson, maybe Bill Nye the Science Guy. I’ve got a couple of scientists there. It may be a comedian like Dave Chappelle. I’ve got a few guests at my dinner party. You might be thinking like, “Wow, Kathleen is super connected,” and I’m not. I’m not.

This dinner party exists only in my head, but it really does help me cultivate this confidence of what kind of advice would Beyoncé give me if I feel like I’m struggling with having a hard conversation with a business partner. It’s really fun to kind of almost play it like an ad-lib game or have unexpected people give you unexpected advice to the problems that you’re trying to solve, like how would Neil deGrasse Tyson, how would he help advise me in solving this design problem.

It can really lead to some creativity and innovation. Whenever you’re feeling creative and curious and innovative, there is no room for feeling bad or feeling sorry for yourself or having fraudy feelings. At that point, you’re energized and excited just to make the thing. That’s how I like to do it.

Emily Thompson
Love that, Kathleen, your fake dinner parties. I like to be a little more practical I think. I always look at
proof.

One of the things that Kathleen say to each other and ourselves consistently is ‘I can do hard things.’ We know this because we’ve done it. We can look at the past, at what it is that we’ve built. I imagine anyone listening to this, you’ve done something hard in your life at least once or you probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast on that cool device that you have in your hand or in your pocket or wherever it may be.

You can do hard things. If I ever need to bolster my confidence and get something done that I maybe haven’t done before or it seems a little daunting or I’m trying to tell myself that I’m not going to be able to accomplish it, I always look back at all the things that I have done.

If I can’t do it for myself, I call up a friend or pour a glass of wine and go talk to my partner, David, and we’ll go over some of the things that I’ve done, whatever I need to do to remind myself that this is just one more hard step on a very long path and journey of hard steps. It’s not quite as fun as Dave Chappelle and Beyoncé, but I find it just as useful.

Kathleen Shannon
Well, Emily, one of the things that you’ve always done that’s really inspired me is to approach everything as an experiment and to know that you can test and change. I think whenever you approach a project as an experiment rather than like, “Oh my gosh, this is my livelihood and I need to make some money,” you’re open to failure because aren’t scientists looking to fail. Aren’t they looking to prove themselves wrong?

I think that that’s what we’re trying to do as well is really see what works and what doesn’t through the lens of an experiment, like this is a thing that we are trying. Yes, our livelihood does depend on it, but whenever we can get curious and be open to failing, we succeed nine times out of ten.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. I love that notion ‘I can do hard things’ feels like a much more tangible and specific belief to cultivate as opposed to what you might call self-esteem or self-confidence.

This brings me back. Boy, when I was a freshman in college I remember, I just kept getting rejected from stuff. I wanted to join all these clubs and they wouldn’t have me. I was like, “What the heck? I was such a rock star in high school. This is bogus.” It really did kind of bring me down in terms of what you’d call self-confidence.

So I made a big old notebook with bullet after bullet of cool things that I’ve accomplished. If you sort of look at those evidence points for not just, “I’m great,” but, “I can do hard things,” I think that’s really galvanizing and resonating.

Emily Thompson
Yeah, it’s important. It’s so easy to start beating yourself up and forget that you’ve gotten here because you did cool things or you did something and the next thing is just the next thing that you have to overcome. It’s just an easy, simple tactic for getting you there.

Kathleen Shannon
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is that it’s not supposed to be easy. No good story doesn’t come without some challenges. We’re on a hero’s journey and that means we’re going to be falling on our faces sometimes and that’s okay. We’re supposed to.

Pete Mockaitis
This is so good. Tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear, rapid-fire, your favorite things?

Emily Thompson
My favorite quote, it’s not even inspiring, it’s one of those things that drives me a lot. It’s really funny, I also have to share the story that surrounds it. The quote is ‘Look for what’s different.”

It came from a teacher that I had once. I think about this all the time. It was in reference to looking for four-leaf clovers of all things. We’re like out in the school yard, looking at clovers, and she told us to look for what’s different because it’s the four-leaf clover that’s different from the three-leaf clovers.

I think about that all the time. I absolutely know that little mindset nugget, that little just quote that seems so simple, is one of the things that’s definitely brought me to where I am, where it’s not the 14-step blueprint that’s going to make me 18 figures or anything like that. It is the thing that’s different that will take you down the path to what it is that you’re supposed to do.

The quote that I’m always thinking of is Dear Ms. Thompson, because we did share a last name too and that’s just a whole other level of magic there, this idea of you should be looking for what’s different, not at what’s the same.

Kathleen Shannon
Is that how you find so many four-leaf clovers? Is that your secret?

Emily Thompson
Yes, it is. That is my secret. I also just shared the secret to how it is that I find four-leaf clovers more easily than anyone I’ve ever met.
Kathleen Shannon
Wow, I love it. Mine is – I’m going to butcher his name, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and it is “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Pete Mockaitis
And it rhymes. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Emily Thompson
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. This one changed my life and we’re often asked what business books we recommend and this isn’t a specific business book, but it is one that will teach you the power of vulnerability and resilience and it has changed my life.

Kathleen Shannon
Mine is just Harry Potter, all of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely, thank you. Could you share a particular nugget that really seems to connect and resonate with your audience? You hear them quoting it back to your often.

Kathleen Shannon
Do the work. It’s so funny whenever we were writing our book, we were asking our audience, “Is there anything that we have said that really stands out for you?” All of them said, “You’re constantly just telling us to do the work.”

That means to get into that mindset, to get into your habits and routines, and to establish those boundaries and to lean on your wolf pack, and your tribe, and your community, and to really be who you are 100% of the time in work and life and that takes a lot of work, but you can do it, so do the work.

Emily Thompson
I agree with that one, except I think I’ll expand because one of things that I feel like comes back to me often, I feel like there’s been some Instagram graphics made out in the world where at one point I said, “Do the work is what happens between the wanting and the having,” so a nice little definition there for it’s all the work that happens between wanting something and actually having it.

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

Emily Thompson
BeingBoss.club.

Kathleen Shannon
I was going to say, www.BeingBoss.club.

Emily Thompson
Good job. Good job Kathleen.

Kathleen Shannon
We’ve had our listeners get stressed out about the way I say www.

Pete Mockaitis
I was thinking that. I noticed that myself. I’m like interesting choice.

Kathleen Shannon
Yeah, yeah right. We have an interesting URL, so I like to include the www for context. But yeah, that’s where you will find us.

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

Emily Thompson
I do, and Kathleen, I look forward to hearing what you have to say about this one. One of my very favorite ones and I think this is especially for people who have jobs because I think there are a whole other set of rules, it applies to both, but job people. I think I challenge people to say no three times this week.

Kathleen Shannon
That one makes me start to sweat a little bit.

Emily Thompson
I know it does. I know it does.

Kathleen Shannon
I have a hard time with it.

Emily Thompson
I think it’s a good one.

Kathleen Shannon
Mine is going to be make space for what you want, whether that is on your calendar or whatever that looks like for you, make space for what you want. I would say on your calendar and schedule it and make it happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm. Well, Emily, Kathleen, this has been such a treat. Thank you for sharing the good stuff. I hope that your book is a smash success and you keep on being boss and flourishing in all you’re doing.

Kathleen Shannon
Thanks for having us, Pete, this was so much fun.

Emily Thompson
Yes.

Mar 19
0

275: How to Manage Your Manager with Mary Abbajay

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

 

Mary Abbajay says: "If you don't know what your boss' priorities are... sit down and have a conversation."

Mary Abbajay shares how to manage up, understand who your boss is, and adapt to different personality types.

You’ll Learn:

  1. One tiny, yet powerful, thing you can do to differentiate yourself from 99% of employees
  2. Obstacles to managing up
  3. Strategies for dealing with difficult bosses

About Mary

Mary Abbajay is the president and co-founder of Careerstone Group, LLC, a woman-owned, full service organizational and leadership development consultancy that delivers leading-edge talent and organizational development solutions to the public and private sectors. She currently serves on the regional Market President’s Board of BB&T Bank. She was Chairman of the Board for Leadership Greater Washington where she led the adult Signature program, the Youth Leadership Program and the Rising Leaders Program.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Mary Abbajay Interview Transcript

Pete Mocakitis
Mary, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Mary Abbajay
Thank you so much. I’m very excited to be on this podcast and to meet you and, hopefully, have a little bit of fun today.

Pete Mocakitis
Oh, yes. Well, I certainly think we will. And speaking of fun, I understand you co-founded and co-owned a fun spot in DC. What’s the Toledo Lounge all about?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, digging up my past, are you, Pete?

Pete Mocakitis
Yeah.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, it’s my claim to fame. Yeah, you know, it’s funny. My sister and I opened a bar, I want to say, it was in the ‘90s, that shows you how old I am. And it was called the Toledo Lounge because it was our home town was Toledo, Ohio and we’re in Washington, DC and we thought DC was a little too self-important so we’re going to open up a little dive bar. And our little dive bar turned into this huge raging success, packed every night, and we ran it for like 13 years.

But I only worked there for a couple of years. But the best part about it was that a lot of the people that came back then in the ‘90s, the mid to late ‘90s, are now very famous people that you see in TV all the time. And I knew them when they were just young drunk people.

Pete Mocakitis
That’s great. And so what’s the status of the Toledo Lounge today?

Mary Abbajay
We sold it a couple of years ago. So I worked at it for a couple of years, and it’s really, really boring, let me tell you, to own a bar. But we kept it running, my husband’s brother ran it for like 10 or 12 years, and then we sold it. And the people that bought it tried to keep it as the Toledo Lounge but everybody knew, without the sisters there, it wasn’t very good. So they didn’t do well and they had to close it.

But I will tell you, one of the reasons I opened the bar was because I was really tired of having really bad bosses, and I thought, “You know what, I can be my own bad boss.” So actually looking back it was kind of a pivotal moment in my life in terms of what I went on to do afterwards.

Pete Mocakitis
Well, that’s cool, yes. And so, tell us, orienting quickly a bit, what is it you’re doing now afterwards in the world of professional development?

Mary Abbajay
Yes, so what we do, I own a little company. I have about five people in my team, and we do organizational development and professional development trainings. So I like to say we do one or two things. We’re either helping organizations to create environments where people can be really successful, can be engaged, can do great work, or we are helping the people be able to be great workers and bring their full self and be really successful in the work life. So we help people play well together and we help people play well.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Excellent. And so along those lines you’ve got this book Managing Up, an important topic. What is it all about and why is it important now?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, gosh. So I think it’s very important now for a couple of reasons. Well, first of all, it’s important because managing up is an essential skill for your career, right? You have one career and it’s up to you to manage it. And part of what’s going to help your career is your boss, like your boss actually matters. Your boss has a lot of influence over your career trajectory, a lot of influence over the kind of opportunities that come your way.

So it’s really incumbent on you to really develop that relationship, right? And it’s about what you can do. And the other reason I think it’s important now is I think we’ve gone really far to the employee engagement side which is a great thing. I’m all about that. And I think that we have lost or some of us have lost sort of the understanding that we have to bring our best selves to work as well and that we can’t really wait or expect our leaders and our managers in our organizations to do everything for us. We’re partners in that.

And so Managing Up I think is important, especially the demographics of the workplace change, to remind people that, “Hey, it’s not all on the organization to do everything for you. You have to bring some stuff as well.”

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. And so, then, I think for some who have never managed up, that maybe require a little bit of paradigm shift.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah.

Pete Mocakitis
Like, “Is that even appropriate?” So maybe you can start there in terms of what is the appropriate way in terms of broad mindset and perspective to think about the extent to which we should be managing our bosses and how that works?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s a great question and it does require a paradigm shift for many people. So the first thing you want to think about is, “Who is your boss? And what are you willing to do to adapt to your boss?” And when we talk of managing up, I want to say a lot of people have a misconception about it. They think it’s about brownnosing or manipulating or sucking up or being a bootlicker or anything like that. And it’s really not that at all.

In fact, if you are doing that, you actually aren’t managing up. You’re just being a manipulative, you know, brownnoser.

What managing up is it’s about building consciously and deliberatively a robust relationship with people who are higher in the food chain with you, and these are people that have different perspectives, probably different priorities, they may have different work styles. So it’s about looking at how your boss likes to work, how you like to work, and assessing that gap and then taking adaptive strategies to really work well with your boss.

And the thing is, Pete, it’s actually about being a really good follower. And in America, we hate the word, the effort, right? We hate the follower word because we love leaders in America, right? Leaders, we teach it, we preach it. It’s a $14 billion with a B industry. But with all those leaders, who’s doing the work, right? Who’s following?

So it’s about really understanding how you can close that gap in power and structure and to build that relationship. It’s about becoming an empowered follower, right? Being adaptive.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Understood. And so, then, it sounds like you’re suggesting that, in many ways, it’s just about getting the clear understanding of how you work, how boss works, and how that can work well together. So can you maybe give us a bit of an example in terms of, “Hey, here’s something that could be causing a bit of friction and the optimal way to address it”?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, I mean, it goes from things as simple as understanding what’s important to your boss. Okay, so, for me, and we have a consulting company. So, for me, clients are important. We live and die by our clients. We love our clients. Like I’ll do anything for a client within reason and that’s legal, right? That’ll be helpful.

And one of the things that’s important to me is that they know that we’re there for them. So I really expect my team to, if a client emails us, to get back to them pretty quickly. You don’t have to have their answer but you have to acknowledge their email or their communication.

So if you know that’s important to me, then you need to do that. And so, for example, it’s also important for me, as a boss, that I know that you got my email, and you better say you got it instead of just waiting for weeks and then later saying, “Oh, yeah, I got it.” So it’s those little things like that, like knowing those preferences and what matters and adapting to them.

It could be that to like really big things. Like what are the priorities that your boss wants to accomplish? What are their goals? And how are you aligning your work to achieve their goals? It’s really important that we don’t sit around and wait for the boss that we wish we had. Instead, we have to deal with the boss that we do have.

And while bosses should adapt to you, like a great boss should adapt to you if you are a morning person, they should be a morning person as well. The truth is, only 33% of bosses adapt to their employees. So you might be waiting a long time. We have to say, “Stop waiting for the unicorn and deal with the boss you have.”

And the other thing that’s really important is we have to understand that most organizations, as I’m sure your listeners know, most organizations promote people based on their technical skills and not their managerial skills. So your chances of getting a boss who’s not perfect are pretty high in the workplace. So instead of sitting around and waiting for that boss to be perfect, you want to use adaptive skills and use adaptive strategies because, by the way, you’re going to need those when you’re the boss if you want to be a great boss.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Well, in a way it seems like these conversations, associated with managing up, are nothing to be feared. In fact, your boss will probably feel delighted, you know, “What a breath of fresh air that you’re proactively asking me things like, ‘Hey, what are your priorities? What are your goals? What are your preferences?’” And so are there any sort of best practice ways to elicit that information or you just ask the question? There it is.

Mary Abbajay
You just go in. And, you know, you’re right about being a breath of fresh air. So we’ve been doing Managing Up workshops for about 10 years and talking with leaders of all sorts and regular people, everybody. And I can literally, Pete, count on one hand the number of leaders or managers that have told me that one of their employees had that conversation with them, on one hand.

And I’ve probably talked about this subject to literally 5,000, 6,000 people. So, yeah, it’s something people don’t do. And it’s so easy to do. So that’s my first tip takeaway, listeners, is if you don’t know what your boss’ priorities are, or you think you do even, sit down and have a conversation. Go for a cup of coffee. Find out what’s important to her. Find out what he likes. Find out what her pet peeves are.

It’s really important to find out and take that in, and then see what you can do to either honor those priorities or avoid those pet peeves.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. So that’s interesting. So, I guess, mathematically speaking, you know, you actually ask the question, “Hey, raise your hand if this has ever happened to you in your career.” And you just don’t get many hands raised.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And when we were doing the book, I interviewed hundreds of people just for the book, and all the people I interviewed that really is are managers, I asked them, “Has an employee ever sat down with you and asked you about your workplace preferences or your style?” And, again, like nobody said yes. Like two people said yes.

Pete Mocakitis
Wow.

Mary Abbajay
It’s crazy.

Pete Mocakitis
Well, that is striking, you know, because I figured, you know, you’d be the minority, right? But to be in the ballpark of under 1% is striking.

Mary Abbajay
It’s crazy, yeah.

Pete Mocakitis
And so, oh, wow, what a takeaway right there in terms of it don’t take much to really stand out and be supremely impressive.

Mary Abbajay
I know. Because the truth is to be awesome at your job, you have to be awesome at your job. And, as you know, like the world isn’t a meritocracy, right? So you also have to be awesome at that relationship, and that’s one way to be awesome at that relationship.

And what gets in the way, I think, for people managing up, so whenever we do a workshop where I give a talk on it, there’s always a couple of people that are like, you know, “I object. This is stupid” And what happens is that we get in our own way. So one thing that gets in our own way is our ego gets in our way.
We get caught in this trap of like, “Well, you know, my boss should give me more information,” or, “My boss should know what I’m working on,” or, “My boss should be more proactive in reaching out to me,” right?

Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, right? If your boss isn’t, then you have to be the one that adapts and goes to ask for what you need. And those that gets in the way, “You know, we feel like it takes extra effort.” Like when we talk about a micromanager like, yes, managing up is going to create extra work on your plate. But it’s extra work that’s going to be good for you, your boss, and the organization. So that gets in the way.

And then the last thing that gets in the way, besides your own ego and our own sort of like desire not to have to do it, is perspective. And so what we talked about in the beginning, having the right paradigm and the mind frame, is we have to start being able to look at things from other people’s perspective. And your boss has a different perspective. They have a different skillset probably, definitely a different experience. They sit in a different place in the organization. They probably have different pressures.

And so once we can get out of just our own narrow perspective, which may or may not be right, and we can actually do a little empathy, a little like, “Huh, I wonder what the world looks like from Pete’s angle?” Whatever expands our choices and what kind of strategies we can use for our boss.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. That is good stuff in terms of what an opportunity for differentiation. And with regard to taking the time, my hunch is that you may find yourself having saved time because by getting a real clear sense of the goals and priorities, you can go, “Oh, so this other stuff doesn’t really matter that much, so I could maybe just put that on the bottom of my list and not worry about it and nothing explosively bad will happen to me as we go.”

Mary Abbajay
That’s exactly right. And oftentimes, you know, what you think is important and what your boss thinks are important maybe really different. So you’re absolutely right. It can save you time by understanding what they care about and what you can kind of let go off and not spinning your wheels on things that they don’t really care about.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. That’s powerful. Well, so I guess when I think about managing up, I guess, my first thing that my brain goes to is, “All right, boss is doing something annoying, troublesome, unprofessional, rude,” just that is driving you nuts in one way or another, you know. And so you got to have that tricky conversation with a conflict, but then there’s a power dynamic in which you are on a lower – so that’s the first thing I think of when I hear managing up. I go right to the most dramatic, unpleasant.

Mary Abbajay
Worst-case scenario.

Pete Mocakitis
I’m glad we started easy, like, “Do that thing. Be a 1% professional and have that conversation.” But then when things get into the tricky territory, like, you know, I’m thinking, let’s say, there’s a complete lack of clarity. Here’s an example, there’s a total lack of clarity associated with decision-making roles, associated with a group collaborative project, and you say, “Hey, boss, this is kind of driving us all nuts. We don’t know who’s in charge, and then you just say, ‘Hey, just collaborate.’ And it’s like we decide we need to know. We need to know who’s got the decision-making authority and what kinds of areas?” but the boss isn’t giving it.

This is super detailed example but I’m just saying I think that this does happen in which you want something from the boss, you’ve asked for something from the boss, the boss gives you sort of an answer that’s not really satisfactory or sufficient. How do you get what you need?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s a couple of things in that example. First of all, you have to frame requests correctly. Okay, so, and you did a nice job in that. So you want to go to the boss and what you don’t want to say is, “You need to do this,” because that doesn’t fly very well.

So you want to go and say, “Hey, boss, so we need your help, or I need your help,” if it’s you or the team. Make sure you’re speaking, “We’re unclear about who is responsible for buying the apples for the company picnic, and we’re also not sure on the budget, or if we have the authority to actually go buy the apples. Can you clarify that for us? That would be really helpful.”

Pete Mocakitis
“Well, Mary, just figure this out. I can’t be in the weeds on all of this stuff with you, Mary.”

Mary Abbajay
“Oh, got it. All right. So that’s perfect. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy the apples, I’m going to spend $50, I’m putting them on your credit card. Is that acceptable?” So when they say that, then you come right back, and you say, “Here’s my plan. Does this work for you?”

I mean, in some ways, if your boss isn’t giving you information because they’re kind of like, “I’m too big of a picture. Go figure it out,” which, by the way, is the kind of boss I am. Then you need to come back with that boss and say, “Here’s what we’re doing. I’m going to be in charge of this, or George is going to be in charge of this.”

So it depends on what kind of boss you have. If it’s that kind of boss who wants you to figure it out, then you need to go figure it out but tell that person what you did. If your boss is just hard to pin down, then you need to go and say, “Here’s what I need, and here’s why I need it.”

Pete Mocakitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
Does that make sense?

Pete Mocakitis
Understood.

Mary Abbajay
So you’ve got be a boss detective. You’ve got to know who you’re dealing with when you go have those conversations. Like it drives me crazy. So I’m definitely a hands-off boss. I am, until I’m not. And so I want them to go figure it out, and I want them to come back to me with options. Like I don’t want to have to hold their hands. But they know that about me because I tell them every day. But you have to know who your boss is.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. I’m with there. So, now, you’ve done a little bit of categorizations associated with bosses and types, any boss, naughty boss, some work style personalities. Could you give us the quick orientation to these concepts to see sort of who we’re dealing with here?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, if you can’t label your boss, who can you label anymore in this world, right? So we cover some different – we take Managing Up from the perspective of personality and work styles because that’s really what you see. And so what we did, what I did, is really broke people down to a couple different personality types, and then we went and took after that, then we went and talked about 10 difficult boss types.

So the main personality types are introversion or extroversion, so that’s very helpful to know that. Then we went and talked about four work styles. And one work style was what we call the advancer, and the advancer is the person that’s – I’m an advancer, for example – fast-paced, task-oriented, wants to get a lot of stuff done quickly, doesn’t really want a lot of, you know, soft huggy muggy relationship building.

I love my people but I don’t want to talk to them all the time about it. And just really focuses on tasks and getting things done, and wants to make decisions quickly, very pragmatic, move the ball forward all the time.

Then another boss type is also very fast-paced. We call this boss the influencer or the enthusiasts. And this boss is about high energy, moving things forward, but moving with people. So the kind of a cheerleader, like the inspirational person, loves to take risks, loves to innovate, loves to do different things, and wants it done with people along their side. So fast-paced and people-oriented.

Then the third type that we talk about, these are the people that we call them the evaluators. So they slow it down, you know, they’re the efficient perfectionist, they’re task-oriented, so not warm and fuzzy but not cold. They love the details, they want things done right, they’re like the measure twice, then measure twice again, and then cut once. We call these the evaluators. Different energy, and what they care about is getting things right every single time.

And then the last boss that we talk about is people-oriented. They are people-oriented and they are also moderate pace. So they want to kind of slow things down, they care about the people. These are the people that want to build team, they want to make sure everybody is happy, they don’t want to make anybody unhappy, and they want to get things right, and they want everyone to be secure. And this boss we call the harmonizer.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Understood. And so, then, once I know that, I imagine you’re saying, “Go ahead and give them what they want.”

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, so, for example, if your boss is an advancer like me, and they are fast-paced and they want to get stuff done, and they don’t want to be huggy muggy, and they don’t want a lot of chitchat, they want decisions made. Then you want to really pay attention to that personality and do things that work best with them.

For example, if your boss is always impatient and in a hurry and just wants stuff done, when you go into their office, don’t sit down, fall of on a chair, and then just chitchat for 15 minutes. We’ll want to punch you in the face. You want to be able to like go in, be brief, be business-like and be gone. So you want to pay attention to different personalities and work styles so you know what works for these bosses.

For example, if you have an energizer boss, one of the qualities of this boss is they’re optimistic, they’re enthusiastic. And they’re going to come in, Pete, they’re going to be like, “Wow, let’s do this new idea. Let’s put an office on the moon.” And you’re going to be tempted to be like, “That’s dumb,” and be a wet blanket.

And so you can’t do that with that boss. You’d have to say, “Oh, that’s an interesting idea, and we may have some challenges.” So you want to know that you’re working with them and not against them in a way. So you want to find out what your boss is and adopt strategies that are going to work for that boss that doesn’t push them away from you.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Very good. Well, then, now I want to hear about there’s some things that are just bad behavior, you know, no matter what your work style is, things that can be disrespectful, just mean. And so how do you handle those tricky ones?

Mary Abbajay
When you’re the mean person or when your boss has the bad behavior?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the boss is mean, you know, the boss seems to just have little regard for you and others as human beings and steals credits, publicly shames, they’re just like all the naughty things the boss does.

Mary Abbajay
So when you have a boss that does that, you want to think about the spectrum of behavior. So on the one end, you have the good boss, they’re easy. They might do that once in a while or occasionally like be snippy. Then you have those bosses in the middle that might do this behavior frequently. Like we call those the difficult bosses, like the narcissists, the impulsive, the pushovers, we have some difficult bosses.

But then you have, on the other end of the spectrum, I put it like the red, like, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson.” We have what we call the truly terrible, and these are the psychos, the crazies, the bullies, the people that are screaming at you, the egomaniacs. Now they’re a whole another category of bosses. And with those bosses, it’s not so much about managing up as is about surviving.

And I talk about, I always caution people like it’s okay to quit. I think you want to talk about that later but, you know, if you have truly psycho behavior on your hands, or behavior that is just not acceptable, then you don’t have a lot of choices. You can’t do much managing up. You have to choose to protect yourself.

But if the boss is kind of snippy, well, maybe you need to look at, “Are they really snippy or are you just taking it the wrong way?” So you have to kind of assess the behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then can you help us make that distinction between, well, what’s kind of tricky, okay, there’s this sort of snippy every once in a while, they’re in a mood versus truly terrible? I think it might be eye-opening for some in terms of if you can just sort of lay it out in terms of these are behaviors or examples that tend to be almost unworkable and, thus, it’s time to explore the exit.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah. So, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever read any Eckhart Tolle. I love his stuff. He said that human beings have – he wrote The Power of Now – human beings have three choices when they’re faced with a difficult situation. Choice number one is you can change the situation or you can, choice number two is you can adapt to accept the situation, or, choice number three, is you can leave the situation.

And so when you’re talking about someone who’s truly terrible, you know, screaming, raging bully, then there’s not much you can do to change other people. There’s nothing you can do to change other people. And in terms of your choices about going to HR, for example, those are pretty risky as we’re seeing now with the MeToo, and it gets even riskier the smaller kind of business you work in.

So maybe if you work for a really large company with a robust HR department it might have some traction. Going to you boss’ boss is also a little risky. Your boss’ boss probably hired that person and they may not be as supportive as you want.

So the next choice is to accept and adapt it, right? And when the behavior is so bad, like if they are screaming at you on a daily basis, when you are feeling demeaned, when you are feeling sick, when you are physically and emotionally strung out, when you are planning your day more about how to survive than how to thrive, it may be time for you to take that third option which is to leave.

And this is a very difficult choice for many people but quitting is always an option. And quitting as an option, more people I do think need to consider. I mean, look, you spend most of your waking hours, most of us spend at work, and those should be good waking hours. And those should be hours where you’re alive, and you’re doing great stuff, and you’re feeling great, and you’re contributing to something.

If you have a boss that’s truly terrible, that’s irredeemable, then we really do – you need to leave because you will become sick. I mean, there are studies after studies that have shown how toxic bosses make people physically and mentally sick. You need to get out if you have one of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Now, you used the word irredeemable, and I would love to get your take on, if you do need to have a tough conversation, like, “Hey, you know, every other week or so you say,” the boss says something that’s just kind of super hurtful.

Mary Abbajay
Terrible? Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, just terrible. So I guess there are some things that could be in the blind spot of the boss or, you know, they just – it’s hard to know. It’s like, “Yeah, I know I do it. I don’t care,” versus, “Oh, I had no idea I was being interpreted that way.”

Mary Abbajay
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So how do you dance in that world of providing feedback in the hopes that a boss will change a behavior?

Mary Abbajay
So it depends on the relationship you have with your boss and it depends on your boss. Like can you imagine someone like – take Donald Trump, for example. There are certain people that can give him feedback and there are certain people that can’t give him feedback, right, from what we read in the news. And he’s a pretty powerful boss, he’s the President of the United States, so it’s about your relationship.

If you have the kind of relationship that you can give feedback then you want to do it, you want to do it privately, you want to have that conversation, you want to make it so that you are showing your intention as to make them successful, and your intention is to also let them know that you’re on their side and you’re going to, have a request of a different behavior.

But let me also caution that if the boss is truly terrible, they may not take that feedback well. If you really believe that it’s a blind spot and they don’t know, that’s good. But if they are truly a bully or a true really heavy narcissist, that conversation may backfire on you, so you want to be really careful. Also, you want to look at, “Are you the only one being targeted or is it everybody?”

So that conversation is very difficult and that’s a case-by-case situation. And if you do have that conversation, be prepared for it not to go well and role-play it first. Because the truth is a lot of people might just say what you did. They might just say, “I’m a screamer. I don’t care.” So now the choice is clear for you.

You can either stay there and deal with the screaming, right, and kind of put on your golden work shield every day so it doesn’t impact you, or you can choose to leave. And the other thing you have to do is assess, “Is it worth it?”

So I know a lot of people would say, “I would never work for someone who screams, or belittles me, or embarrasses me in front of people, or is a narcissist.” Well, then a lot of people would never have worked for Steve Jobs, right, because that’s pretty much how they described him. So only you can decide what you’re willing to put up with and what is worth it to you.

But what I don’t want people to do is think that they don’t have choice. Really, at the end of the day, I want people to be in choice. You get to choose what adaptive strategies you use for your boss, and you get to choose how you want to be treated.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very cool. Thank you. Now toward the end of the book you’ve got 50 tips for managing your manager. Can you share a couple of those that have been just supremely resonant with folks and helpful?

Mary Abbajay
Well, the first tip is really learn what your boss wants and adapt to it, right? It’s not about, if you’re waiting for yourself to adapt, if you’re waiting for your boss to adapt to you, you might be waiting for a very long time. So you want to really find out what’s important to him or her and see what you can adapt.

You want to bring solutions not problems. And depending on what kind of boss you have, it will depend what kind of solutions you’ll have. So, for example, if you have an advancer or you have an extrovert, then you’ll want to go and bring a couple of solutions.

So one thing that people tend to do in the workplace is they tend to complain. But inside every kind of complaint is request. So don’t bring a problem without a solution, and don’t bring a complaint without a request. I mean, these are just classics. And they’re classic because they work.

The other thing is respecting your boss’ time. When you walk into her or his office, you want to be clear and prepared about what you need. Because in addition to managing you and others, your boss most likely has her own tasks to accomplish so know what you need from your boss and then get out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
Make sure you align your priorities. You know, oftentimes we get stuck in our own priorities and we’re not shifting for our boss’. Being proactive is huge, and that means really – you know, when my staff is proactive, I love it when they look at my calendar and like, “Oh, you know, Mary is doing a podcast. Let’s get on top of things that she might need for that before she asks us for that.” So being proactive is always a way it’s going to make you stand out.

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

Mary Abbajay
I would like to talk a little bit about and give one specific strategy about what I see is the boss that most people hate the most.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s do it.

Mary Abbajay
All right. So the micromanager is the one that comes up all the time about the one that drives people crazy. The micromanager is the boss that’s always over your shoulder, that is always telling you what to do, doesn’t give you an authority, and is just on you all the time.

And most people find this really frustrating, because we like to have some autonomy at work, right? We like to stretch our own creative muscles and we like to be able to make our own decisions. And so the micromanager, well, is probably the most annoying to most people. It’s also the easiest one to manage up to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
And do you want me to tell you how to do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Please do, yeah.

Mary Abbajay
All right. So it’s so obvious, Pete. What would you think you would do if you ever had a micromanager?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes.

Mary Abbajay
And how did you handle it? What did you do? Aside from being frustrated.

Pete Mockaitis
I think I just continually tried to anticipate what they were going to ask and need, and then just like over-did everything.

Mary Abbajay
Dude, you go it. You could’ve co-wrote the book. And that’s so easy but most people are like, “I’m resisting this. Like I don’t want to do this. It’s unfair.” But you need to flood them with information before they ask. You need to anticipate this behavior. You’re not going to change them right away. Either it’s based on their lack of trust of you, or they just need to know, so stop resisting it and just give them the information before they ask. Give them as much as you can, whenever you can, and find out what’s important to them.

And a lot of times you will gain their trust once they see that – and do things their way. If they like the Oxford comma, use the Oxford comma, but it’s really about being forthright, proactive, and giving them information before they ask.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Mary Abbajay
You’re welcome.

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

Mary Abbajay
Oh, yeah, oh, that’s a hard one. So I think, and I’m not going to get it exactly right. I tried to find it before this. But it’s from Cher, it was something that I read years ago when I was younger trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and she said, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I just kept not doing the things I didn’t want to do, and pretty soon I was doing the things that I wanted to do.”

And I really like that because I think your career is a journey, and it’s a marathon, and I think that there’s a lot of pressure to know exactly what you want to do as soon as you get out of school. So for those of us who took us a little while to figure out what you do, just keep trying different things.

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

Mary Abbajay
Well, you know, I’m really into lately, I’m really into like the neuroscience of emotions and interactions. So there’s some great work being done by people like David Rock that really they’re pinpointing like what parts of your brain lights up with different emotions and what human beings need. So it’s actually giving the hard science to what people call the soft skills and the soft science. So I’m really into that lately.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how about a favorite book?

Mary Abbajay
Well, you know, I’m an English major so this is like choosing a favorite child so I’m going to say I’m going to go fiction, being an old English major, and my favorite book, I would to say, is a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. And I love this book because it’s a story of a woman and her life just – most of us would be like, “Oh, my God, how horrible. Terrible things have happened to her.”

By the end of the book, she is blessed and thankful for everything that her life brought to her, and I just really like that sort of embracing what life is and never letting yourself be a victim.

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

Mary Abbajay
So I couldn’t do my job without Google. Like let’s just give old-fashioned Google a big shout out. And I think I’m really lately into something called the Pomodoro Method, I’m kind of old school here, which is this 25-minute productivity tool where it forces you to work for 25 minutes straight without answering email and I’m loving that.

And then, of course, I don’t know what I would do without my Starbucks pre order app because I hate waiting in lines. So those are three favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you flourish?

Mary Abbajay
My favorite habit. I take a walk. Well, I’m a 10,000-step girl, right? So I try to get my 10,000 steps in every single day. In fact, when I’m going to this podcast, even though it’s raining, I got 1300 more steps to get in today. But I really find walking for about 45 minutes to an hour every day is something that really keeps me sane.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And is there a particular nugget or piece that you share that seems to get quoted back to you frequently?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, God. Yeah, there’s a lot. But I’m thinking lately, people always say that I say, “Just do it. Just do it. Like don’t complain. Just do it. Make it work. Figure it out and take control of your life.”

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

Mary Abbajay
Okay, if they want to learn more about me, they can either go to Twitter @maryabbajay, they can go to my website, either careerstonegroup.com or managingupthebook. But if you want to get in touch with me, I’m kind of old school and I do like to email. It kind of runs my life. So if you need to talk to me, you can email me mary@careerstonegroup.com.

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?

Mary Abbajay
I do. It’s kind of a two-fold. One is adapt. It’s really important to be awesome at your job, to always be willing to adapt, to be able to accept change, to be able to look around, be strategic and adapt to what is. As we know from biology, that in evolution, that people who adapt, people who could be flexible are the people that were going to be around for the long haul.

And the second one, which I feel very strongly about, is take responsibility. And I mean this in two ways. I think people need to take responsibility for gaining the skills that they need to be awesome at their job, they take responsibility that they’re always developing their career and their skills, and responsibility for driving their career.

And we all need to take responsibility for our impact in the world and our impact in other people. It’s about understanding, separating your intention from your impact. And to be someone that impacts in a positive way, which I like to say leaves a positive wake after every encounter with people so that people feel great about you, about the encounter, but mostly so people feel great about themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Mary, thank you so much for taking this time and writing this book. I think it’s going to be transformative for a lot of folks in terms of relationships improved, fast tracks joined and some bosses left. So everybody wins no matter which way it goes. So much appreciated and please keep up the great work.

Mary Abbajay
Thank you. And, Pete, you are a doll face. It was so much fun to be in your show. Thank you again for having me and I wish you the best.

Mar 16
0

274: Enhancing Collaborations by Improving Civility with Chris Edmonds

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Chris Edmonds says: "Create an environment in your team... where people can speak up."

Chris Edmonds returns to talk about crafting a culture of civility in the workplace.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Troubling research pointing to incivility on the rise
  2. The 3 Ds that destroy civility
  3. A reframe on blame

About Chris

Chris Edmonds is a sought-after speaker, author, and executive consultant who is the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group. After a 15-year executive career leading high performing teams, Chris began his consulting company in 1990. He has also served as a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Companies since 1995. Chris is one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Great Leadership Speakers and was a featured presenter at SXSW 2015.

Chris is the author of the The Culture Engine, the best seller Leading At A Higher Level with Ken Blanchard, and five other books. Chris’ blog, podcasts, research, and videos can be found at Driving Results Through Culture. Thousands of followers enjoy his daily quotes on organizational culture, servant leadership, and workplace inspiration on Twitter at @scedmonds. Visit his website at www.drivingresultsthroughculture.com.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Chris Edmonds Interview Transcript

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

Chris Edmonds
Pete, I am excited to be here. Appreciate the opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited too. So we chatted way back when in Episode 149.

Chris Edmonds
Wow. Almost a year ago.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s wild, but the time flies. And you’re still making great ideas out in the world, so it is fitting that we chat again.

Chris Edmonds
Well, I thank you for that. And I certainly have found that my focus is upon culture and leadership, and we still have culture and leadership problems all around the globe. So I have job security.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s true, it’s true. Well, I was also intrigued by… You have another – I don’t know if you’d call it a job, an avocation – you’re a published songwriter and performer. What’s the story about this here?

Chris Edmonds
It’s true, it’s true. I was convinced… Okay, this is going to go back probably before the year of your birth. So I started playing guitar when I was 12 – that was 1964. Yes, it was The Beatles that inspired that. And by the time I hit college in 1970, I was convinced that I didn’t need a college degree; I was going to go to Hollywood and get work immediately. So, that did not play out, but I did lose almost a full year of college courses, which there was some pain having to recover from that.
But what I realized is that I’ve been a working musician forever in LA and in San Francisco and in Austin, which is a very, very cool music town even today. And we’ve been here in Denver for 12 years, and I started with a band and it wasn’t the perfect match from a values standpoint. What a surprise that that would be one of my biases. And joined a team in late ‘06 that I’m still a part of, and they’re twisted, they’re immensely talented, great songwriters, great performers.
And so we’ve been playing together for 11-12 years and have evolved from a country thing to a country-rock thing to a classic rock thing, to now I’m learning Gaga and Pink, because the market is… They want variety. And so we do mostly corporate stuff and weddings and stuff. We do some festivals, we do a few clubs here and there. But I actually got official songwritership from ASCAP for some of the music I wrote back in the early ‘70s. Because once you perform it and someone pays you for that, you are an official professional songwriter. So, I haven’t written anything in the last 10 years; most of my writing goes around the culture and leadership thing. But I have a studio 20 feet away that has 20 guitars hanging in humidified cabinets. It’s a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Twenty?

Chris Edmonds
It’s a problem. I’ve cut back. And years ago my wife would just kind of… We’re celebrating 39 years of wedded bliss next month, so there’s another podcast story potentially. But I said, “I found a guitar, I want to buy a guitar.” She said, “Fine, which one are you going to sell?” Rats! So, she’s pretty smart, she’s pretty smart.

Pete Mockaitis
So, just like at work when they make a request, if you say, “Okay, sure thing. Which of these things on my plate should go?”

Chris Edmonds
“Which of these projects would you like me to let go of?” But I hated, hated selling guitars, but I’ve actually been pretty good. And I’ve got some banjos and I’ve got some mandolins and I’ve got a base, and I make reasonable music on most of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Alright, so the main topic of today is not so much your musical career, although that’s intriguing; or your guitar collection, but you caught my eye with your take on civility, which I think is an important issue. And I want to hear why it’s important to you.

Chris Edmonds
Well, it’s so interesting because my bias has been, let me help leaders A) be aware of the quality of their culture, and let’s craft a proven template of sorts, a system of sorts, that will allow leaders to be more intentional about the way people treat each other. But boy, what an interesting year we’ve had with the “me too” approach and the dynamic that it has caused with women who’ve been badly treated for, oh, let’s call it centuries, by men in power – being able to stand up and say, “Not anymore, never again.”
And so, what really struck me is Weber Shandwick is a firm – yes, at WeberShandwick.com – and they’ve done the state of civility surveys research for the last 6-7 years or so. And so at about the time of the “me too”, let’s call it tidal wave, Weber Shandwick came out with this wonderful, completely depressing data about how basically 69% of people surveyed – that’s workplace plus it’s community, so it’s neighborhoods – 69% said that there’s a problem with civility today in America. And in 2010 it was about 65%, it dropped to about 63% in ’12 and in 2013, but it’s a problem.
And 75% believe that incivility in America has risen to crisis levels. That’s not a, “Oh, this is something someone ought to look at.” This is a significant red flag. And so, I just believe that if we allow the incivility to continue, these numbers aren’t going to get better. They’re going to get worse. And I’m convinced that with as much time as people spend in their workplaces or doing work if they’re remote workers, which of course is growing – the degree of them being treated with trust and respect is not offsetting the degree to which they’re being treated incivility-wise.
So I’m convinced that this is something that leaders need to not just be aware of, but grab the bull by the horns and look at the quality of relationships in their workplaces. And if we can start there we might actually make some headway in the next year or two.

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, it’s interesting – this is a very serious topic and yet I can’t help but chuckle as I imagine all the uncivil things I might say to you as a joke.

Chris Edmonds
But we could there very quickly, which of course the twisted mind of mine is, I laugh. But then it’s, “No, no, no, no, no. We can’t say that on the air. That’s not good.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right, so keep the iTunes clean right in here. So, maybe let’s get clear with definitions a bit. When you talk about “civility”, how would you roughly define that, and what is the opposite of civility?

Chris Edmonds
It’s interesting – I’ve learned over the years, and blessed with Ken Blanchard’s friendship and mentorship. And Ken Blanchard taught us the power of simple stories and simple ideas. And he of course with The One Minute Manager way back in 1978 taught us that there were three secrets. So one of the things that I’ve learned from Ken is there are three things that we can remember as humans.
So, one of the things that has been very, very consistent – and I’ve been doing research around, again, the quality of workplace cultures for 25 years – and so my 3 Ds are perfect descriptions of the absence of civility. And they are Dismissing, Discounting, Demeaning. So, if we think of the workplace experiences that we’ve had over our careers, those three come up very, very quickly, and we can see different faces popping up on the little movie screen inside of our foreheads.
And it can be driven by power, it can be driven by politics, it can be driven by flat-out angry people that have really no business supervising anyone, including themselves. But the idea of dismissing others’ ideas, dismissing others’ efforts, dismissing others’ accomplishments – there’s no good in the relationship that’s going to come of that. There is going to be a logical erosion of trust, respect and dignity – what a surprise.
And my three Ps of course are around the culture side, which is Purposeful, Positive, Productive. And none of those three Ps are going to be able to gain traction and be sustained if you have any of those Dismissive, Demeaning, Discounting behaviors happen. And the reality is that as we look at our workplaces and we look at the kind of behavior that often gets recognized, gets rewarded, gets people increasing responsibilities and all of a sudden, “You’re a great sales person”, meaning you’re aggressive, assertive, you’re the most bold with getting customers to give in to your demands for buying X or Y or Z, then you might then become a team leader, in which case because you were a terrific – by the way, maybe a bit mean – individual contributor, then naturally we’re going to put a team under your control.
And if there’s not really a sensitivity that, “Managing a team is different than managing myself”, the 3 Ds is not going to get us anywhere; the 3 Ps will get us somewhere. So, you’ve heard me use a couple of three different languages – the 3 Ds, which are going to erode the trust, respect, dignity. There’s the trust, respect, dignity statement alone which is pretty important. And then it’s the Purposeful, Positive, Productive team culture, division culture, work culture. So, anything that happens that is in those 3 Ds is going to fit right into the incivility side.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take… I have a feeling that listeners and myself included would say “I don’t dismiss, I don’t discount, I don’t demean.” Can you share what are some maybe subtle or overlooked ways that we can be guilty of doing this stuff?

Chris Edmonds
It’s so interesting, and it happens often in one-on-one kinds of scenarios. We have a lot of organizations, especially in the US and in Europe are doing a lot more project-driven work environment. So in other words I might be in a team of – and I’ll use a classic one – of sales people, but we’re working on a big project, which means I’m working with technical folks and folks that do manufacturing for example, or they are delivering services out in the field around the globe or what not.
So my project team may not be a team that is a, quote, “intact” team; it might change from project to project. And what can happen in that dynamic is there is often – again this is very Western – it’s about showing up others. So if I can withhold information from you, then I look like I know more than you do, I’m smarter than you are, I’m more valuable than you are, and yet what I’m doing is I’m eroding the team’s ability to get their work done and to wow that customer consistently. So I can be very indirect by withholding information that you have asked me for that I’m supposed to give you, but I can be very, very, very subtle in that way.
The ideas that often get generated in a project team, and most project teams are not calm and cool, they’re “hair on fire”, right? They’re moving pretty fast, and often deadlines are increasing and we may not be delivering exactly according to plan, which increases everyone’s heartbeats and what not, so the pressure goes up. It can again help me as a player on that team – maybe not a leader on the team, as a player on the team – to say, “Weren’t you supposed to have that done last week? I still am waiting for X.” That’s discounting, that is the dismissing.
Someone comes up with an idea: “I know we can fix this if we just all stop and do X right now.” And if you and three others in the room go, “That’ll never work. We’ve tried that before” – there’s the dismissing thing. The idea of winning… It’s so interesting as I look at organizations, and as metaphors we use sports a lot, and of course it’s a very American thing, I get it. It certainly happens in Europe, but the sports things is about winning too. It’s not about a great locker room and a great team and we all sacrifice to win. It’s about me beating you, us beating your team. So those subtle things are all about keeping score and about me looking better than you, including me making you look bad. So that’s one avenue.
Another avenue, and I remember a culture client that was a delight, because they made such great progress. But what I typically do when I go into a client who’s saying, “We think our culture’s bad / broken, and we don’t know what to do” Leaders are really not asked to manage the quality of their culture, so when they discover that the culture is bad or broken, they may not know exactly what to do. So they may do nothing – that’s not helpful. They may try something which could be helpful. They may bring a consultant like me in, which could be helpful – hopefully helpful.
So this particular client I did probably 24-25 phone interviews – part of my discovery – to learn what are the norms in this culture, what are the things that get valued and validated, what are the things that get quashed or discounted in some way. And what I learned was that the executive team – there were five members of that executive team – teased each other and their direct reports mercilessly. I mean from the moment they hit the door they’d been thinking of cutting remarks they could use, quote, with their “buddies”.
They really did like each other and they really did trust each other, but what the interviews helped me realize is that those comments – hilarious, creative as they may be – erode trust, respect and dignity. And people basically said the teasing is so bad that, “I can’t simply show up without my armor on.” And my armor on might be, I’m on edge, or I’m thinking to myself of what’s the comeback I’m going to make to Lee when he comes by, or whatever it is. It creates an energy-sucking and heart-sucking kind of dynamic. And these guys were shocked; they said, “No one’s ever told us that the teasing is bad.” And they all of sudden kind of got… I said, “No one?” And they said, “Well, we’ve had a little bit of feedback, but we dismissed it.” There’s one of my Ds.
So, it’s interesting the bold dismissive things, the “You’re an idiot, you shouldn’t be in charge of this project, you always fall apart when the pressure…” – those kinds of messages are not teasing; they are very, very bold and demeaning and eroding people’s confidence. And again, it’s the “I win, you lose” kind of a dynamic. It’s the subtler things that leaders may not be aware that are, “Oh, he’s only teasing”, right? Well, sure, but if through that teasing you are reducing trust and respect, you’re reducing the likelihood of people proactively solving problems for their customers and for the company – that’s really stupid. That’s not just dumb; that is full on stupid.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a great example there with regard to the teasing. I’d love a few more, maybe even some non-verbal things. I didn’t even say a word, but I am indirectly or unintentionally being dismissive, discounting, demeaning.

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. Let’s see how many eyes have rolled across tables in yours and my careers over the years. So there’s the heavy sighs… Again, some of us can go to our own families, and my mother was a pro at the non-verbal dismissive stuff; my poor father. Mom’s 96 years old, still here. She’s actually turned very kind, which is just a shock to most of us, but… I’ll go visit her next month, which is kind of cool.
But the body language conversation, and it’s about the slumping in the chair and it’s the holding one’s hand in your hands and shaking your heads while someone’s explaining their idea or their solution, or “Here’s what I tried to do and it didn’t quite work” – all of the those things, everybody notices. And especially if you’re in a leadership position and you begin to either, again, verbally discount and demean, verbally dismiss people’s efforts and ideas – everybody else is watching.
And so there’s this interesting dynamic of, “I don’t want the eye roll. If they get the eye roll, then I could be winning, because I’m not being judged at this point by the boss or what not.” And it’s so interesting to think back to some of my – they weren’t “worst” bosses, but they were really, really challenging bosses. And one I remember I worked for him for a couple of years, and I remember him being incredibly talented at the full body dismissiveness, and it was classic, it was just wonderful. It was the heavy sigh, and it was the shaking of the head, and it was the getting up and pacing while someone is…
Those are not subtle; those are very, very bold. And his intent was to express disappointment that we weren’t doing the right things, that the problem wasn’t solved, that the customer wasn’t satisfied, etcetera. But his anger was so powerful in the room. And the thing that was very interesting – as you posed that question I got this guy’s image clearly pacing in one of our conference rooms. And I remember when I left that job, that he wrote me a very kind card that said, “Appreciate all you’ve done. You’ve really advanced our programs, and your customers love you” and yadda, yadda yadda. And I completely dismissed it, because it was the first time in two years I’d ever heard an encouraging word from him. So you think about my expectations day-to-day around him – it was, “I hope he is mad at somebody else today”, as opposed to, “We’re all going to rock it and he’s going to love us.”
And then I go to my best bosses – Jerry Nutter, who’s is the best boss that I celebrated in my book The Culture Engine. And he had Nutterisms, he would say, which we of course – his team… I’m still connected to these folks that I worked with under Jerry; 30 years later we’re still connected, we still remember Nutterisms and kind of share them a little bit.
But Jerry’s view was, “You guys are brilliant, you’re closer to this than I am. I’m kind of over here doing more strategic things; you guys manage the tactics and if you need something from me, then let me know.” And he was great in front of a big team, he was great in front of our volunteers. But what I remember, what all of us remember was, when we did something wrong, when we fell short, Jerry never demeaned, discounted us, never dismissed us; but he engaged us in conversations. It was almost worse. It’s easy to discount someone who’s going to go, “Oh, you’re an idiot. You just screwed it up again.” It was like, “Yeah, whatever.” I’m going to go off and do my own thing, because I’m not going to get anything of validation from this boss, or from these peers.
But Jerry was so driven to want us to make new mistakes every day, not the same ones. It was totally cool, it was totally cool. And so we often… And again, I’ve had this conversation with Sue and with Anne – part of this team that worked for Jerry for quite a while – we would go into that meeting with a full plan of what we should’ve done different, and what we’ll do next time.
If I was dealing with Skip – the other boss – I wanted out of the room as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to engage, because even if I came up with an idea, I knew it wasn’t going to be good enough. And so, there’s this deflation that happens and it’s like, “I’m going to go get beaten up again.” And again, I think all of these bosses are attempting to find the magic; they’re trying to craft a way to motivate people, a way to inspire production. And mostly it was all production.
What was great about Jerry was that… And again, some other great bosses that I’ve had and been blessed with – is it wasn’t just about production; it was about production, but it was also about learning, and it was about growth, and it was about opportunity, and it was about, “What can we do different? How do we wow these folks next time, because we’re going to do this cool program in three months again? How are we going to completely wow them, because now we’ve kind of wowed them again? What are we going to do?”
And it was this constant feeling like I can come up with ideas. They may be stupid; I’m not sure they’re stupid or not. But we had an environment with Jerry that no idea was stupid. It might be less brilliant than others will come up with, but the ideas of, “How do we make this better? How we do this different?” moves you away from maintaining a system to actually creating new experiences and better loyalty from customers, and even more important – and you can hear it in my voice – better loyalty from the employees, because we felt valued, we felt validated.
When we screwed up it was mostly kind of laughter and, “Gee, that didn’t turn out like I thought.” But if you think of the productivity, which is often the sole output that is driven by lousy bosses and okay bosses. Great bosses are typically interested in growth and maintaining a good relationship and in essence being kind, but also being kind of the “tough love” thing – being truthful about, “Here’s our target, here’s what happened, where we felt short. What are we going to do?” But it’s much, much my experience – and Pete, I know yours is too – it’s much, much more likely that we’re going to drive harder and move the organization forward faster if we feel trusted and respected and treated with dignity, than not.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, yes. And I want to kind of touch upon that point when you said you knew you screwed up and you were going in for the conversation, and it wasn’t demeaning. What were some of the questions posed to you, or how did that conversation unfold?

Chris Edmonds
Well, it’s so interesting because I think back to… And let’s use the Skip and Jerry comparison, because the classic lousy bosses and a great boss. And Skip was always interested in blame, and it rolled off his tongue very, very quickly. And so, if I was going in as an individual contributor that had fallen short, I knew I was going to get blamed. And maybe this is going to give you some insights into the way my mind works – it’s like, “What creative ways is he going to blame me today?” I was really kind of intrigued with that. “Where is he going to go with this?”
But it wasn’t that I was interested in learning from him; I wasn’t feeling like I was going to leave inspired. It was, I was going to be blamed. And I didn’t want to be blamed; I wanted somebody else to be blamed, which is again, not a team-building thing; it’s a team-eroding thing.
And so, the questions that Jerry asked were about, “Tell me what you’re thinking now. I know what your plan was, we went through the plan. If there was one or two things that you wish you would’ve done different now, knowing what we know now, which we didn’t know before, what are they?” So it’s the solution thing. What are we going to do different next time? He would say all the time, “How do we make new mistakes?” I remember him asking me once, “Did we make all new mistakes on this thing, or did we make some old ones?” And I said, “Well, I think we made a couple of old ones.” “Well, tell me more about that.”
And so it wasn’t a power conversation, it wasn’t him better than me, him dismissing me, demeaning me, discounting me. It was, what’s out there that we can learn from? How do we share this with the rest of the team? So again, we make new mistakes, we do different things. What are people going to be asking for next, because we’re going to have to deliver it? How do we inspire a much, much better experience?
And again, I was a non-profit executive – I was a YMCA executive for 15 years, and it’s like, how do we create those environments without spending a lot of money, and wowing these folks and wanting them to increase their loyalty and increase their feeling like we’re helping their kids, we’re helping them with validating, character-building kinds of programs. And again, yes, what I’m saying is, in this environment, Christian-based, Christian values-based, pretty classic non-profit organization with a crystal clear purpose about serving others and building character, and yet I had some of the worst bosses I ever experienced, in that organization. And I had some of my best bosses in that same organization.
And I went into the, boy, corporate finance. How’s that for moving from an environment of a non-profit into the opposite? And I found – not surprisingly – bosses that came at this thing from fear and didn’t want their people to make mistakes, and were demeaning, dismissive and discounting. And in the same environment I had absolutely great bosses. In that scenario I was a coach, I was an internal consultant. And so, I saw the same behaviors.
So, there could be some humanness to this, but the idea to get to… Hopefully I answered your question around what did Jerry ask, what did your best boss do to kind of inspire learning and resolution to whatever we screwed up. And I think both bosses were interested in the same thing, but one was about creative solutions and validating what we tried, and the other was about blame.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. Thank you. Well, tell me, Chris – anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Chris Edmonds
Well, I really hope that there’s something to be said for… And the “me too” movement continues to gain some powerful advocates, and I’m hopeful that we can craft more civil, validating experiences for anyone who’s ever experienced that kind of harassment. But what I want leaders to do, and you said it earlier, that, “I don’t do anything dismissive. I don’t do anything that could be remotely seen as harassment.” And I think, “You know, there’s some of my teasing that I probably did.”
So, it’s the idea that as leaders you need to be aware of how people feel, and whether or not they’re feeling trusted, respected in every interaction. And I think you will be shocked and surprised to find that for the most part incivility is very, very common. We could look at the bullying influence, which is unfortunately classically American. But there are great leaders doing great things in organizations and not letting people mistreat others. And we spend, again, so many hours in the workplace, that’s something that I’m very, very hopeful about. So, I’m going to keep pushing, and I appreciate you giving me a forum to kind of preach to the choir.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good, thank you. Certainly. So now, we did it last time, but I’d love to see if maybe anything’s new and evolved. Could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Edmonds
Oh boy, where I’ve really gone, and it’s certainly been shaded by some of these conversations around civility, is I go back to Nike’s “Just do it” mantra. And I’m kind of like, “No, if we do it and we’re mean and nasty and ugly – yes, we might win but others may not.” How about, “Just do it nicely?” So, can we evolve to actually being civil, and maybe even the next layer of that is being nice to each other? That’s my bias right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite book?

Chris Edmonds
I just finished Shawn Murphy’s The Optimistic Workplace. Shawn’s a longtime friend, and I was pleased to help him with his launch a couple of years ago. And I was sad to say that I didn’t read the whole book. So, read the whole book and I just love it. And I think, again, what an interesting title, looking at how do we create workplaces where people want to go to work, where they want to contribute, where they want to be creative, where there is a natural optimism that we’re actually – God forbid – improving the lives of our community members and our employees and our customers. That’s a high, high target. And I want to give a shout out to Shawn – he’s just gotten a contract for his next book, which is going to be about belonging, which I’m very excited to hear about. So, couple of shout outs to Shawn Murphy there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s handy?

Chris Edmonds
I just had a wonderful opportunity last week at a learning session. I was qualified in an assessment that is about leadership impact. It was really, really cool; but a whole bunch of consultants in a room at one time, which can be kind of dangerous. And what was really, really interesting was going out to dinner with all these folks. Again, I travel a lot; most of the time it’s a very, very solitary life. And for the last seven years or so I’ve been on Tim Ferriss’ low carb diet and it’s worked very well for me.
So, we go into these beautiful restaurants and I’m like, “How’s that prepared. Can I have it grilled and not fried? No starches, no potatoes, don’t even bring me the breads.” And people would look at me and it’s like… We did this three nights in a row. And they’re like finally on the third night, “You’re really serious about this”, and I said, “It’s something that if I don’t feel my best physical self, then how can I do well?” I just turned 66 and I’m out traveling all the time; it’s exhausting to travel. So my habit continues to be to be disciplined in how I fuel my best self, and it’s working still pretty well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. And do you have a preferred means of folks contacting you or reaching out if they want to learn more about your stuff here?

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. I’d send them to my absolutely wonderfully, recently redesigned website, which is at DrivingResultsThroughCulture.com. I know it’s a handful, but I’ve got my books available there, I’m in the midst of Year 2 of culture, leadership charge videos – little 3-minute videos on how leaders can be more effective in managing their team culture. So, that’s probably the best place – DrivingResultsThroughCulture.com.

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

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. So, one of the things that is critical – and again, we can take it from the “me too” and people speaking up – create an environment in your team. And you don’t have to change the whole company, but in your team, where people can speak up, where people can say, “We’re not working together well. We’re mistreating each other, the teasing has gone too far”, so you can start to address what could be harmless intentions. That may not always be the case, but to in essence reduce those things that erode trust and respect in the workplace. Let people speak up. It can be hard conversations, but to continue on a path of dismissing and demeaning folks, isn’t going to serve you well.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, there you have it. Chris, thank you so much for chatting again, this was a lot of fun. And I wish you and your company and your book all sorts of success and luck in the months to come here.

Chris Edmonds
I so appreciate it, Pete. Again, thanks for the opportunity, always enjoy speaking with you.